Yay cartoons!
A few brave members of the Simmons’ Progressive Librarians Guild ventured out to White River Junction Vermont on November 28th. We went to see the Schulz Library which is part of The Cartoon Studies Program. The school has a extremely competitive two year cartoon studies program that draws in over 30 top name artists as faculty, like my favorite Anders Nilsen!
Our tour guides were Robyn Chapman, a comic artist herself and Betsy, an intern.
The library supports the 36 students and over 30 visting staff of the school and holds a very unique collection. The one room library, made possible by their benefactor Jean Schulz, has graphic novels, daily and weekly comic strips, comics? journals, visual reference material, zines, mini comics and student work. It is a beautiful space, cozy and conducive to curling up with a nice copy of your favorite graphic novel.
The library is used for research, summer workshops as well as browsing. They currently use Library Thing as their online catalog. The great benefit of LibraryThing for this library is the visual browsing aspect.
I know this trip really helped me put my skills into a real world context. Robyn and few students are the librarians that take care of the library. This library will be growing so we tried to think of some practical subject analysis tools for them to try out. Serving a small patron group they are able to use comic specific language and really tailor the collection to the needs of the students and faculty.
I was really excited about the thesis comic books that their students have to design and then are archived in the library. I think this is what makes the collection so unique and as these artists leave the school and gain a reputation on their own these works will become priceless.
The most exciting part of the trip was their energy about our visit.
They are very excited to start a partnership up with Simmons and would love to have an intern who loves comics and loves libraries! Great job Schulz library and keep up the good work.
-wendy brown