My first panel at New York Comic Con was geared toward librarians who are interested in incorporating and exploring comics and graphic novels in their collections. The panel was sponsored by the NYPL.
With a good crowd in attendance, mostly educators, the moderator, Amie Wright of Carleton University, began the panel with a quick overview of the 50 years of comic librarianship, which has its roots in a “School Library Journal” article from 1974 that included a sketch by Will Eisner.
Other highlights include the 1990 publication of “Comic Librarianship: A Handbook,” which idealistically predicted comics librarianship would be ubiquitous in 10 years. In reality, it’s still a struggle for many school libraries to take comics and graphic novels seriously as important reading for students.
Another big highlight was C2E2 in 2009, when the American Library Association first participated in community outreach and professional development at a large convention.
The panelists then shared their “origin stories” of how they got into comics and some of the coolest things they’ve accomplished. There was a wide variety of backgrounds among the panelists, some were lifelong comics readers, to the point where they were looking at comics strips in the newspaper for hours at a time as a toddler in a high chair. Other panelists came to comics much later in life, either through a spouse or as part of their eventual careers. One of the coolest things that Megan Halsband did working for the Library of Congress was acquiring key issues of rare comics, like Batman #1 and Captain America #1.
The panelists also gave advice for librarians, which included not needing to have a specialized position involving comics, you can always bring your passion of comics to any job you have. A key theme was relying on resources that others have created, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. They shared a document of resources that are super helpful for anyone in the field.
Common threads between all of the panelists were the eternal struggle to convince people that comics aren’t just for kids and that the medium of comics encompasses so much more than just superheroes. There’s practically a comic out there about every topic. Another bit of advice was not just to build collections. You have to also include community outreach to let people know your collections exist. One way would be to visit local comic shops and partner with shops to learn what’s popular in the community and what their best-selling comics are.
Overall, it was a great panel filled with awesome insights and resources for educators, librarians, and comic book fans alike.
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