On October 14, the Lee Road branch of the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Public Library will be unveiling a bronze Harvey Pekar statue. According to Comics Alliance, Pekar’s widow, Joyce Brabner, decided to start a Kickstarter to fund the statue to raise awareness for comics as a literary artform. Before his…
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My New Jobs
This fall I will be starting two new jobs that combine my interests in art, comics and libraries. First, I am very excited to be starting a job at The Beguiling and Little Island Comics as a Library Services Coordinator. The Beguiling is a 25-year-old comic shop in Toronto that…
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A Library Tourist – the humble beginnings
In the spring of 2001, I was living in Melbourne, Australia, studying journalism at RMIT University. When my boyfriend (now husband) came to visit me, one of the first places I took him was the State Library of Victoria — a large, stately library across from the university’s campus. Within…
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A Queer Archive
During the Canadian Library Association National Conference and Tradeshow in Ottawa this past June, I met Chatham-Kent Public Library Board member, Mark Reinhart, who was on a panel discussing how to reach LGBTQ audiences in libraries. An artist as well as a library board member, Mark was on the panel…
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My Feliciter Debut
For the past week I have been on a trip through New Brunswick and P.E.I. checking out the beautiful scenery, delicious seafood and various neighbourhood libraries. Upon my return to Toronto I noticed that a digital version of the Canadian Library Association’s Feliciter was released featuring a few articles I…
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Zines an Emerging Trend in Librarianship
My dream job is to be a zine librarian. My original dream job was to be a journalist who wrote about zines. That came true in 2006 when I got the job editing Broken Pencil magazine. But in 2009 — after writing about film for various magazines for years (that…
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Comic artists at ALA
This video by cartoonist and filmmaker Derek Kirk Kim was taken at the American Library Association convention’s Artist Alley. In the video, comic creators talk about how refreshing it is to sell their work at a convention for librarians where the people coming to their tables are enthusiastic, curious and…
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The Will Eisner Graphic Novel Prize for Libraries
Earlier this week The Will & Ann Eisner Family Foundation announced the launch of a new prize for libraries that will see over 100 graphic novels donated to three libraries each year. The Will Eisner Graphic Novel Prize for Libraries will give each winning library a collection of graphic novels…
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To Thine Own Librarian Be True
Twitter is buzzing with the latest hashtag game #ReplaceAWordWithLibrarian. To play, tweeters take famous phrases from books and films and replace a word with “librarian.” For example: “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your librarian” (@NateCrowder), “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my librarian. Prepare to die” (@CAwkward) and…
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Fight for Your Right