Graphic Novel Collections in Academic ARL Libraries

Cassie Wagner

This study examines the extent to which ARL academic libraries collect graphic novels. Using a core list of 176 titles developed from winners of major comics industry awards and a library-focused “best of” list, the holdings of 111 ARL academic libraries were searched using the librar- ies’ online catalogs. Results suggest that most of the libraries studied do not aggressively collect graphic novels. Also examined were associations between date of publication, prior serialization, overall collection size, monograph budget, and ARL ranking and graphic novel holdings. To better serve scholarly research in this area of increasing interest, libraries will need to reexamine their collecting policies.

ne of a handful of art forms Comics have undergone a renaissance whose development began in recent years. Since the mid-1980s, an in the United States, comic increasing number of comics have focused strips appeared around the on stories that appeal to readers outside turn of the twentieth century. The first the stereotypical demographic of young generally recognized comic book, Famous men and boys.1 Comics imported from Funnies, appeared in 1934. The success of Japan—manga—and stories in genres this work, a compendium of previously other than superheroics and science fiction published newspaper comic strips, led have appeared. This broader approach other comic strip syndicates to create their has reaped dividends. Trade comics and own collections and quickly commission graphic novels are a fast-growing area of new material for the new format. The publishing, with sales topping $250 million genre most commonly associated with in 2005, more than triple the amount sold comic books, superhero adventures, be- in 2001.2 In addition, a number of major gan in earnest with the first appearance recent movies based on comic books have of Superman in 1938. In that character’s succeeded at the box office. Movies such wake, a wave of superpowered heroes as Spider-Man, Road to Perdition, X-Men, emerged, challenging the existing genres Fantastic Four, Iron Man, and Watchmen of romance, mystery, horror, and western demonstrate that the stories told in comics comics. Public outcry over comics’ sup- have an appeal and a relevance beyond the posed role in juvenile delinquency in the traditional format and audience. 1950s led to an extended slump in comics Mirroring this popular appeal, comics sales and creativity. have been receiving increasing critical

Cassie Wagner is Web Development Librarian in the Morris Library at Southern Illinois University Carbondale; e-mail: [email protected]. ©Cassie Wagner

42 Graphic Novel Collections in Academic ARL Libraries 43 and scholarly attention. Comics have comic books. In addition, several ARL won prestigious literary awards such member libraries have resource guides as the Pulitzer Prize (Maus), American related to comic books and/or strips. Book Award (Palestine), Hugo Award Terminology when talking about this (Watchmen), and Guardian Prize (Jimmy medium can be confusing. What are Corrigan) and have been recognized as a comic books, trade comics, and graphic best paperback of the year by Publishers novels? What are the differences between Weekly (Kings in Disguise).3 The amount them, if any? At a basic level, all are con- of scholarship on comics has increased structed in the same way, using a combi- continually since the 1960s as interest in nation of images and text to tell a story. all instruments of popular culture and Comic books usually are magazines of 32 media has increased.4 Michael Rhode to 48 pages sold as serials. Trade comics and John Bullough’s online bibliography are collections of the content of several of both popular and scholarly articles comic books bound together and sold about comics and comic strips runs over as monographs. Graphic novels are long 1,100 pages.5 works issued in a monograph without Like genre fiction, comics are a rich prior serialization. It is generally agreed cultural text that provides insight into the by comic book scholars that the first true period they were created. Issues tackled graphic novel published in the United directly or implicitly in the stories reflect States was Will Eisner’s A Contract with the issues and concerns of the times. God and Other Tenement Stories, which Unlike genre novels, however, comic appeared in 1978.9 books contain images, giving shape to This study looks at both trade comics the ideas of the artists and authors. As and graphic novels. The author uses the a mass medium, comics reflect the ideas term “comics” to refer to materials in and symbols important to the culture at both categories. Of the titles examined, the time of their creation.6 They also pro- more than half were serialized in part or vide evidence and interpretation of social in their entirety prior to publication as change, as well as historical and current monographs. Another large percentage events.7 Like genre novels, comics are a was issued only as monographs. A very medium that has influenced millions of small number were initially published as lives over the years and, until recently, longer single works and then combined been largely ignored by scholars as a to form larger monographs. source of cultural information. This study seeks to document the As documented by Ellis and High- holdings of graphic novels in academic smith in their article, “About Face: Comic libraries. A further goal is to gauge library Books in Library Literature,” libraries acceptance of comics, as well as the sup- and librarians have often led the charge port given to research on this popular against comic books, perhaps to reinforce culture medium. their self-image as protectors of art and knowledge. Over time, this attitude has Methods slowly changed.8 Today, comics are regu- In general, this study follows the meth- larly reviewed in publications for librar- odology used by Kevin P. Mulcahy in his ians (for instance, Library Journal, Booklist, “Science Fiction Collections in ARL Aca- Choice, and Voice of Youth Advocates). Dia- demic Libraries.”10 Because of differences mond, the major distributor of comics in in the media examined, some alterations the United States, has devoted a section were necessary. of its Web site and marketing energy to It was hypothesized that there would courting the library market. Twenty aca- be a positive correlation between library demic Association of Research Libraries holdings of graphic novels and the follow- members hold archival collections of ing variables: overall collection size, the 44 College & Research Libraries January 2010 library’s monograph budget, the presence college or university were removed. Two of an archival collection of comic books, francophone Canadian universities with and currency of book publication. French language catalogs were excluded. A list of core graphic novel titles was A total of 111 libraries were examined.13 developed using a subset of winners of This list does overlook several major col- the Eisner and Harvey Awards. These lections of graphic novels and popular awards function similarly to the Academy culture materials, such as that at Bowling Awards for film, with awards granted in Green State University, held by non-ARL a variety of categories each year. Titles libraries and nonacademic ARL members. are nominated for awards by a panel Libraries’ holdings were determined of experts and then voted on by a large through searches of the libraries’ online number of comics industry professionals. catalogs. The searches were conducted The categories chosen for this study best between March and August 2007. Only reflect the type of graphic novels collected books listed as being in the English lan- by libraries because of their emphasis guage and available in circulating collec- on book-length stories. The list of Eisner tions were included. Several of the schools Award winners came from Wikipedia, examined have extensive collections of and that of Harvey winners came from comic books, including some serial comic the award organizer’s Web site.11 books that were later collected to form the Because neither the Eisners nor Har- selected titles. These serial comics were veys extend back to the beginning of the not included because they were not part medium, a list of valuable works that span of circulating collections. Noncirculating the medium’s history was also sought. collections were excluded because of the Stephen Weiner’s The 101 Best Graphic difficulty in obtaining holdings informa- Novels is a well-recognized list of recom- tion for some of these collections online. mendations for libraries and was used to Books listed as available in the catalog at identify important graphic novels that that time (not those on order or shown have not won awards.12 In all, 176 titles as missing) were counted. Titles avail- were included. able through a consortium or at branch ARL libraries were identified using campuses were not included. ARL’s Web site. Public libraries and Because many of the titles considered research libraries not associated with a have complicated publishing histories,

TABLE 1 Comics Awards Included in Study Award Abbreviation Time Period 101 Best Graphic Novels W Eisner: Best Serialized Story E1 1993+ Eisner: Best Finite/Limited Series E2 1988+ Eisner: Best Graphic Album E3 1988–1989 Eisner: Best Graphic Album New E4 1991+ Eisner: Best Graphic Album Reprint E5 1991+ Eisner: Best U.S. Edition of Foreign Material E6 1998+ Harvey: Best Graphic Album H1 1988–1990 Harvey: Best Graphic Album of Original Work H2 1991+ Harvey: Best Graphic Album of Previously Published Work H3 1991+ Harvey: Best American Edition of Foreign Material H4 1988+ Graphic Novel Collections in Academic ARL Libraries 45

TABLE 2 Total Graphic Novel Holdings of Academic ARL Libraries Percentage of Titles 100%– 75%– 50%– 25%– 15%– 10%– 5%– Owned 76% 51% 26% 16% 11% 6% 1% Number of libraries 1 4 21 20 22 30 13 Percentage of 1% 4% 19% 18% 20% 27% 12% libraries in study determining which books matched the A list of academic ARL libraries award winners was challenging. Where with archival comics collections was possible, the exact edition that won the developed by comparing the list of ARL award was selected. Books that contained libraries with the comics collections identical content (with the possible ex- listed by Randall W. Scott.14 There was ception of introductions and afterwords) no significant difference between the were included even if the titles were holdings of libraries with and without slightly different from the award-winning archival comics collections (P=0.047) as version. These difficulties may have shown by the TTEST procedure. How- caused some titles to be overlooked in the ever, the mean number of titles (40.3) searches, although every effort was made held by libraries with archival comics to locate each title at each library. In fact, collections was lower (57.4) than that of an early attempt to search using OCLC’s libraries without such collections. This WorldCat was abandoned because the may be explained by these libraries hold- sheer number of records for each title ing the serialized versions of the titles caused considerable confusion. searched. Also, some archival collections are based on one-time donations and Results may not reflect a continuing interest in Significant positive correlations were collecting comics materials. found between each of collection size The graphic novels selected for this (r=0.505), monograph budget (r=0.483), study were published between 1975 and and ARL ranking (r=0.520) and comics 2006. The distribution of titles tends more holdings using the CORR procedure heavily toward the recent period, as this is in SAS. Libraries with more books and a relatively young and growing medium. larger budgets hold more graphic novels Graphic novels published in the most than libraries with smaller collections recent five years given (2002–2006) were and smaller budgets. Large collection no more likely to be held than graphic sizes and monograph budgets positively novels published earlier (P=0.422). There influence ARL rank. Several of the librar- was also no significant relationship in ies studied support centers for the study holdings between titles that were serial- of popular culture, including the two ized first and those released initially as libraries with the greatest total holdings, monographs (P=0.472). Both relation- Ohio State University and Michigan State ships were calculated using the TTEST University. procedure.

TABLE 3 Distribution of Titles by Date of Publication Period 1975– 1985– 1990– 1995– 2000– 2005– 1984 1989 1994 1999 2004 2006 Number of titles 2 15 28 49 60 22 Percentage of titles in study 1% 9% 16% 28% 34% 13% 46 College & Research Libraries January 2010

TABLE 4 Individual Graphic Novels Held by ARL Libraries Percentage of 100%– 75%– 50%– 25%– 15%– 10%– 5%– Libraries Holding 76% 51% 26% 16% 11% 6% 1% the Title Number of titles 3 8 31 35 16 28 54 Percentage of titles 2% 5% 18% 20% 9% 16% 32% in study

Discussion many of these collections were created The results related to budget and collection recently from the ground up, as opposed size were not surprising. It is self-evident to slowly accumulating over a long pe- that libraries with large materials budgets riod of time. This trends against a time will have large collections. As comic books differential, as librarians would choose are not often a primary collecting area, it titles from what was available regardless seems logical that they will be acquired of its date of creation. in quantity only by the richest libraries. Another detail that emerged from this Even then, the rate of acquisition will lag study relates to author demographics. behind that for novels, even genre fiction The authors of the selected graphic nov- novels. The case of Texas A&M University els are overwhelmingly American, male, is instructive. Ranked third by total hold- and white. The prevalence of Americans ings in both this study and in Mulcahy’s is likely a reflection of using American examination of science fiction, Texas A&M awards and a list of titles generated by owns 84.5 percent of Mulcahy’s list of an American librarian. That they are 200 novels but only 65 percent of the 176 male and white is a reflection of an indus- graphic novels selected for study here.15 try—described by some women working At libraries with large or small budgets, within it as an “old boys’ club”—that graphic novels are of secondary (or ter- has long been considered unfriendly to tiary) importance in collection building. women and people of color.16 In fact, only It is interesting that institutions with six women appear as authors of books on archival collections of serial comics the list. Only four appear as artists (and do not hold more graphic novels than each of those draws a story she wrote). those libraries that do not. Perhaps this The largest group of people of color is is because they do not want to spend Japanese, a reflection of the presence of a limited budgets duplicating holdings. number of manga (Japanese comics) titles This practice, however, does limit usage on the list. These authors, too, are over- of the collections by locking the comics whelmingly male. Thankfully, the female away from the main stacks and imposing role in comic book creation is growing as other restrictions on access, actions that the format gains sales and respect. frustrate many potential users. Overall, collections of graphic novels in The lack of difference in holdings ARL libraries are limited. This is shown between stories that were originally re- clearly in that nearly one-third (32%) of leased serially and those initially issued the selected titles are held by between 5 as graphic novel is illustrative of several percent and 1 percent of ARL libraries. things. First, it seems that quality books Only 2 percent of titles are held by more are recognized by academic libraries re- than three-quarters of ARL libraries. gardless of their original publication date, These collections of graphic novels are which is in line with the mission of such often limited to a handful of titles, often libraries as repositories for knowledge lacking the depth and breadth of holdings across time. Second, it seems likely that for comparative studies. Graphic Novel Collections in Academic ARL Libraries 47

Opportunities for Further Research cent of academic ARL libraries. The This study raises issues for future explora- library holding the most science fiction tion. All of the titles on this list were se- novels on Mulcahy’s list owns 97 percent lected by experts. It would be enlightening of all titles.17 In comparison, the graphic to examine what comic books enthusiasts novel held most commonly (Art Spiegel- think are the most useful titles, perhaps man’s Maus) is found in 93 percent of by comparing sales figures or the results libraries, and the largest holdings are of the awards voted on by readers, such those of a library owning 78 percent of as those of Wizard magazine, to academic the titles on the list. While some graphic library holdings. An attempt could also novel titles have obvious been widely be made to locate and include books that adopted by academic libraries, the ma- provide a greater diversity of voices by jority of them continue to be overlooked. adding more works by women and people Comics are a vital and growing me- of color. Many comics feature stories that dium with importance to scholars inves- span several bound volumes. A further tigating both popular culture and culture study could examine whether academic in a larger sense. They are a reflection libraries hold the entire series and why of popular thought and concerns and a they do or do not. Finally, a study could tangible representation of a contemporary be conducted to examine how comics are culture that is both increasingly visually cataloged and shelved in academic librar- oriented and electronically based. Some ies: whether they are shelved together comics titles can provide an unbroken under the heading for comics, shelved narrative line stretching back almost 70 under their content’s subject, or kept in years. These useful materials are increas- a recreational reading area. Such a study ingly collected by academic libraries. could provide further insight into academ- Even so, the rate of collection lags behind ic libraries’ attitudes toward the medium. that for other popular culture materials, such as science fiction novels.18 A hand- Conclusion ful of titles are widely collected by ARL Academic ARL library graphic novel col- libraries and a handful of ARL libraries lections lag behind those of another me- collect a large number of comics. It would dia long neglected by academic libraries: be useful for more academic libraries to science fiction novels. As documented incorporate comics into their collections by Mulcahy, the most commonly held to better support and foster research science fiction novel (Kurt Vonnegut’s on this important art form and cultural Slaughterhouse Five) is found in 99 per- artifact.

Notes 1. Stephen Weiner, Faster Than a Speeding Bullet: The Rise of the Graphic Novel (New York: NBM, 2003), xi. 2. Associated Press, “As More Graphic Novels Appear in Libraries, So Do Challenges” (Nov. 24, 2006). Available online at www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=17805. [Accessed 20 March 2008]. 3. Weiner, Faster Than a Speeding Bullet, xi, 51, 54, 58; Hugo Awards Marketing Subcommittee of the World Science Fiction Society Mark Protection Committee, “Hugo Award History” (2007). Available online at www.thehugoawards.org/?page_id=6. [Accessed 30 April 2007]. 4. Allen Ellis and Doug Highsmith, “About Face: Comic Books in Library Literature,” Serials Review 26, no. 2 (2000): 39. 5. Michael Rhode and John Bullough, Comic Research Bibliography (Dec. 2007). Available online at www.rpi.edu/%7Ebulloj/comxbib.html. [Accessed 20 March 2008]. 6. M. Thomas Inge, “Introduction to ‘The Comics as Culture’,” The Journal of Popular Culture 12, no. 4 (1979): 631. 7. Leslie Bussert, “Comic Books and Graphic Novels: Digital Resources for an Evolving Form 48 College & Research Libraries January 2010 of Art and Literature,” C&RL News 66, no. 2 (Feb. 2005): 103. 8. Ellis and Highsmith, “About Face,” 30. 9. Will Eisner, A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories (New York: Baronet, 1978). 10. Kevin P. Mulcahy, “Science Fiction Collections in ARL Academic Libraries,” College and Research Libraries 67, no. 1 (2006): 16–18. 11. “Eisner Award—Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia” (2007), available online at http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisner_Award [Accessed 30 April 2007]; “The Harvey Awards” (2007), available online at www.harveyawards.org/awards_current.html [Accessed 30 April 2007]. 12. Stephen Weiner, The 101 Best Graphic Novels (New York: NBM, 2005). 13. “Association of Research Libraries: Member Libraries” (2007). Available online at www.arl. org/arl/membership/members.shtml [Accessed 30 April 2007]. The two francophone universities excluded were Université de Montréal and Université Laval. 14. Randall W. Scott, Comics Research Libraries (Feb. 24, 2005). Available online at www.lib. msu.edu/comics/director/comres.htm. [Accessed 5 March 2008]. 15. Mulcahy, “Science Fiction Collections,” 20. 16. Trina Robbins, From Girls to Grrrlz: A History of Women’s Comics from Teens to Zines (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1999), 85. 17. Mulcahy, “Science Fiction Collections,” 20, 24. 18. Ibid., 24–29.