The Glendale Public Library

The Glendale Public Library

Would it be wrong of me to make a suggestion--partly as comic snob, partly as a heads-up--that could potentially change up the shelving at the Glendale Public Library ? Their graphic novels section...well, they don't have one per se. The graphic novels they do have take up two full sections in the TEEN area of the library. I understand the reasoning behind their thinking; the comics on the shelves (a lot of manga) primarily draw teenagers. On the other hand, they've got a copy of From Hell and other comics of dubious content on those shelves, which is a little beyond the sensibilities of most adults I know, much less an adolescent.

If teenagers wanted to seek it out, they'd still be able to find it if the book was located elsewhere in the library. I don't understand under what system of classification (beyond its being a story told using words and pictures) that From Hell would ever otherwise be categorized as TEEN.

Beyond the issue of content, Eddie Campbell--coincidentally the artist of From Hell--brings up a good point in his interview in The Comics Journal a few months ago when talking about the distribution of different media across a retail floor. One wouldn't expect to find the DVD of From Hell next to the comic. Similarly one wouldn't even expect to find the DVD of it next to its VHS equivalent. The problem we encounter with this analogy, however, is that DVD, comics and VHS tapes are all different formats. DVD and VHS--though their formats are different--both fall under the umbrella of the "home video" medium. Conversely, books and comics are the same format (ink on pulp paper enclosed by high gauge cardboard or paper) but two different mediums.

It's the problem of the similar format that make it difficult to justify having a graphic novel section as opposed to just lumping it in with TEEN. On the other hand, some of the content of these comics are certainly unsuitable for a teen audience, not to mention that comics are an entirely different medium than literature. I think the whole thing is all the more frustrating because I would expect librarians to be the last group of people to judge books by covers.

[I apologize for the scattered path this post takes. I wrote it while cleaning and reading and eating.]

Watching:

The Passenger

Reading:

The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell

The Waste Land and Other Poems, T. S. Eliot

The Fixer : A Story from Sarajevo

D