Karen MacPherson retiring from Takoma Park Maryland Library

Photo credits: Bruce Guthrie

 by Bruce Guthrie 

http://www.bguthriephotos.com

 

Folks who've used the Takoma Park Maryland Library at the Takoma Park Community Center or attended children's author events there were accustomed to being greeted by the library's coordinator of children's and teen services, Karen MacPherson.  Karen recently announced that she'll be retiring from the library on June 30.

Like many who loved their jobs especially because of the interaction it provided with customers, the pandemic took a heavy toll.  While most places are looking forward to reopening in full bloom in a near-post-pandemic vaccinated world, the library building will be demolished in November, being replaced 18-ish-months later by a new one.  Operations will move to temporary quarters in the interim.  

Kwame Alexander and Karen

Karen didn't start as a librarian.  As a kid, she loved reading and children's books.  She decided that she'd either be a reporter or a children's librarian.  For 30 years, she was the former, working as a reporter.  Originally with the UPI in Richmond, she moved to Washington, DC and worked for Thomson Newspapers, Scripps Howard News Service (DC correspondent for the Albuquerque Tribune), and finally the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.  She was working for the latter when the 9/11 attacks happened.  The next day, she was on her way to report from the Pentagon when she was told to turn around because there were rumors of another pending attack.  She wondered why she was risking her life when she now had a family (two children and a husband who was also a reporter) and decided to switch to Plan B.

The next year, she enrolled at the University of Maryland in College Park to get a Master's in Library Science.  In 2006, she started at the Takoma Park library.

At the library, she created a new teen section and a number of programs like the Banned Books Club for teens.  In 2009, the latter was recognized with the American Library Association's (ALA) John Phillip Immroth Award, which "seeks out and recognizes personal courage and contributions to intellectual freedom."   For 23 years, she wrote a weekly column on kids books for Scripps Howard News Service.  Later, she wrote occasional kids book columns for the Washington Post.

In 2016, she served on the prestigious Caldecott committee.  The Randolph Caldecott Medal is an annual award to the illustrator of the "most distinguished American picture book for children."  The committee which selects the award winner as well as the runners up is made up of 15 members chosen by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the ALA.  Publishers send in books to be considered (there were said to be 700 works submitted in 2009) and the committee considers each.  It's a time-consuming job and committee members typically serve just one year.

Kate DiCamillo and Karen

 In the year Karen was involved, the winning book selected was Sophie Blackall's "Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bear".  

In 2013, DC's iconic independent bookstore, Politics and Prose, approached the library about hosting out-of-store children's author events.  Over the years, 75-ish have graced the venue including Kate DiCamillo ("Because of Winn-Dixie", "The Tale of Despereaux", "Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures"), Jason Reynolds ("As Brave as You", "Ghost (Track series)", "Miles Morales: Spider-Man"), Katherine Applegate ("The One and Only Ivan", "Animorphs"), Jon Klassen ("Sam and Dave Dig a Hole", "I Want My Hat Back", "This Is Not My Hat"), Tom Angleberger ("The Strange Case of Origami Yoda") and Cece Bell ("El Deafo"), and Sophie Blackall ("Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bear", "Hello Lighthouse").

MacPherson saw many comics creators come through the library. Over the years, I personally attended events there for Alex Alice ("Castle in the Stars"), Alexis Frederick-Frost ("Hocus Focus"), Ben Hatke ("Nobody Likes a Goblin"), Eleanor Davis & Drew Weing ("Flop to the Top"), Emily Jenkins ("A Greyhound, a Groundhog"), Eoin Colfer and Oliver Jeffers ("Imaginary Fred"), Fabien Cousteau ("Great White Shark Adventure"), Gail Carson Levine ("Stolen Magic"), Gareth Hinds ("Macbeth"), Jay Hosler ("Last of the Sandwalkers"), Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm ("The Evil Princess vs. The Brave Knight"), Jérémie Royer ("Audubon: On the Wings of the World"), Jonathan Roth ("Beep and Bob"), Jorge Aguirre ("Dragons Beware!"), Juana Medina ("Juana and Lucas"), Julie Fogliano ("Just in Case You Want to Fly"), Kate Dicamillo ("Leroy Ninker Saddles Up"), Kevin McCloskey ("Real Poop on Pigeons"), Mac Barnett and Matt Myers ("Rules of the House"), Christian Robinson ("Josephine" and "Last Stop on Market Street"), Ruth Chan ("Where's the Party?"), Ryan T. Higgins ("Mother Bruce"), Sophie Blackall and John Bemelmans Marciano ("Witches of Benevento"), William Joyce ("Bently & Egg..."), and Yuyi Morales ("Dreamers/ Soñadores").

In retirement, Karen plans to keep busy -- studying French, playing piano, traveling -- and is also open to volunteering at the library as needed.  It will be nice to be able to see her there again because she's been missed!

Quarantining Coronavirus through Comics at MSU's Comic Art Collection

by Mike Rhode

Like many of us, Michigan State University librarian Randy Scott was sent to work from home when covid-19 began shutting down schools and libraries across the country. To be able to work from home, he had to get creative, since he couldn't take parts of the Comic Art Collection home with him. Scott began clipping comic strips from the Lansing, MI papers that dealt with coronavirus and setting up new subject headings in the collection's Reading Room Index (RRI).

When I checked in with him, and heard that he was doing this, I began sending the daily Washington Post comics pages (I'd been sending the Sundays for years, continuing what crack comics historian Ian Gordon had begun years ago). He's picked coronavirus as his main subject heading, noting "The first mention of the coronavirus (covid 19) pandemic appeared in this collection in the February 13, 2020 episode of Prickly City. Newspaper strips are added here when 5 examples of a title with pandemic-related content are located, clipped and filed in the Library's collection." As of today, he's collected about 600 strips, 400 of which are in the RRI, and 200 waiting to be added.

Strips he's collected include:

• Arlo & Janis (starting Mar. 30, 2020)
• Baldo (starting Apr. 4, 2020)
• Barney and Clyde (starting Mar. 4, 2020)
• Blondie (starting May 7, 2020)
• Brevity (starting Apr. 7, 2020)
• Brewster Rockit: Space Guy! (starting Apr. 6, 2020)
• Candorville (starting Mar. 23, 2020)
• Curtis (starting Mar. 30, 2020)
• Dilbert (starting Apr. 20, 2020)
• Family Circus (starting Apr. 15, 2020)
• Frank and Ernest (starting Mar. 13, 2020)
• Frazz (starting Apr. 18, 2020)
• Lio (starting Mar. 30, 2020)
• Non Sequitur (starting Mar. 9, 2020)
• Off the Mark (starting Apr. 6, 2020)
• On the Fastrack (starting Apr. 13, 2020)
• Pearls Before Swine (starting Apr. 6, 2020)
• Prickly City (starting Feb. 13, 2020)
• Reply All Lite (starting Mar. 30, 2020)
• Sally Forth (starting Apr. 13, 2020)
• Speed Bump (starting Apr. 27, 2020)

New and newly significant related topics include:

• Contagion  
• Covid 19 
• Hand Sanitizer
• Hand Washing
• Hazmat Suits
• Hoarding
• Home Schooling
• Lockdowns
• New Normal
• Quarantine
• Reopening
• Shaking Hands
• Social Distancing
• Staying Home
• Surgical Masks
• Toilet Paper
• Vaccines
• Working from Home
• Zoom

 A typical entry for a Washington, DC-based cartoonist looks like this:

Social Distancing. 
   "Boo Cat Lives and Breathes Social Distancing" (Reply All
   Lite, Apr. 26, 2020) / by Donna A. Lewis. -- Call no.:
   oversize PN6726.S79 Apr. 26, 2020 

Special collections work over the long run and most of this collection probably won't be of interest to users for a few years, and then again after a few decades, most likely for the fiftieth anniversary of the pandemic. But just a cautionary note for those who think they can find everything on the web... this Chris Ware strip from the New York Times from April 26, 2020, has disappeared from the Times' website (and Randy would like a tearsheet if you have it).

Picture from Twitter

April 23: Joe Wos at Manassas Library

Wednesday at 3 p.m. cartoonist and storyteller Joe Wos will give a program at the Central Community Library. Wos is the founder of Pittsburgh's Toonseum. Here's the original link.

Publisher's Weekly on ALA's comic book presence

Graphic Novels in the Spotlight at ALA
By Brigid Alverson
Jun 15, 2010

July 12: Comic Book Boom! exhibit

Comic Book Boom!
Start Time:
Monday, July 12, 2010 at 9:00am
End Time:
Friday, August 27, 2010 at 5:00pm
Location:
Martin Luther King, JR. Memorial Library
Street:
901 G Street, NW
City/Town:
Washington, DC

COMIC BOOK BOOM! The D.C. Conspiracy's high-flyin' summer celebration of local comics, presented at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library.

July 12 - August 27, features an exhibit of original comic art and comic book reading room, showcasing the talents of local D.C. cartoonists.

July 31 and August 21, 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm, bring you workshops to teach you how to make your own comics, led by conspirators Matt Dembicki and Evan Keeling.

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library
901 G Street, NW
2nd Floor, West Lobby

Reason Magazine sort of recommends government comics library site

The local libertarian chaps at Reason Magazine have noted the digital library of government educational comics at the University of Nebraska - check out Hey Citizens! Comics! by Brian Doherty from the January 2010 issue.

Virginia Commonwealth University picks comic book as item 2 million

See "Spider-Man comic VCU Libraries' 2 millionth volume" By the Associated Press, September 28, 2009. It's the Obama Spider-Man appearance, but still this is an odd story. Thanks to Tom Inge and another big donor they've got a decent comic book collection, but it's not something they're really known for.

Tintin Banned in Brooklyn

See "An Intrepid Cartoon Reporter, Bound for the Big Screen but Shut in a Library Vault," By Alison Leigh Cowan
New York Times (August 20, 2009): A21. The story appeared on their blog yesterday as "A Library's Approach to Books That Offend, New York Times City Room blog August 19, 2009, http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/a-librarys-approach-to-books-that-offend/?ref=nyregion

April 25: Library Workshop: Creating Graphic Novels

Reminder time.

Workshop: Creating Graphic Novels
Saturday, April 25 1pm

Columbia Pike Branch Library
816 S. Walter Reed Drive
Arlington, Va.
Learn the basic and finer points of creating graphic novels from Josh Elder, a graphic novelist and author of "Mail Order Ninja."

Appropriate for students ages 10 and up.

Contact mmiller@arlingtonva.us or call 703-228-5261 for more details.

Arlington County's Central Library has a stand-alone graphic novel section now

Arlington County's Central Library has a stand-alone graphic novel section now - I found this out a few weeks ago and was quite surprised. There's a decent selection here too - let's name the titles in the comments. I'll start off here.

300 by Frank Miller, Breakdowns by Art Spiegelman, Shooting War, Late Bloomer by Carol Tyler, Jimbo in Purgatory by Gary Panter...

Cartoon mascot exhibit at Johns Hopkins library

Reproduced in full, from Johns Hopkins' website:

New exhibit at MSE Library captures birth of the Blue Jay
JHU Gazette, January 26 2009


Grauer's Blue Jay: A Hopkins Tradition, an exhibit of Blue Jay memorabilia from journalist, author and editorial cartoonist Neil A. Grauer, opens at the MSE Library on Wednesday, Jan. 28, and runs through May 25.

Since the 1920s, the mascot of The Johns Hopkins University has been the feisty Blue Jay — sporting black-and-blue plumage to match the school's athletic colors.

For more than 40 years, the most popular portrayal of that mascot has been the cartoon Blue Jay created in 1966 by Grauer during his student years as a cartoonist for the university's student newspaper, The Johns Hopkins News-Letter.

The exhibit is drawn from the Grauer Blue Jay Collection, a 1996 gift from Grauer to the Sheridan Libraries of more than 50 items. On display are his original sketch of the Blue Jay, drawn on the back of a 3x5 index card; numerous other original drawings; and lacrosse caps, T-shirts, posters, cups, an umbrella and a travel bag, all printed with the Blue Jay logo.

Several items from Grauer's personal collection are also exhibited, including a pair of Nike limited edition sneakers created for members of the 2007 NCAA Division I Men's Lacrosse championship team.

Grauer has drawn the Blue Jay for numerous JHU athletic teams, the Alumni Association and the Pep Band, and still draws the Blue Jay on request. A 1969 graduate of the School of Arts and Sciences, he is now a senior writer in the Editorial Services Division of the Johns Hopkins Medicine Office of Marketing and Communications.

The exhibit is located on M-Level of the Eisenhower Library and may be viewed whenever the library is open.

Catholic University has a comics collection... who knew?

Of course, they're all issues of a Catholic comic - Treasure Chest, which had some pretty good art. See "CUA Archives Holds Comic Book With First Known Depiction of Black President," by Justine Garbarino, Catholic University's The Tower October 27, 2008 for the link between Obama and Nostradamus.*


*A new rumor! You heard it here first!

OT: A man's reach should exceed his grasp...

...or what's a heaven for? wrote Robert Browning. Here's a story that two of my friends sent me independently. This is very close to my idea of heaven.

Frederick, MD library hosts anime meetings

This is a pretty common story these days, but here's a local example - "Japanese craze lures teens to library," by Stephanie Mlot @ The Frederick News-Post, July 28, 2008.

Syracuse receives grant to support cartoon art collection

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 6, 2008

The Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), Syracuse University Library has been awarded a grant of $79,440 by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to support the arrangement and description of the library's 134 unprocessed collections of original cartoon art. The funds will help support a full-time project archivist for a period of two years. The award to Syracuse was one of six "Detailed Processing Grants" awarded by NHPRC and the Archivist of the United States. Other recipients included Princeton University and the University of Chicago.

Syracuse's collection of original cartoon art is among the most comprehensive in America. It includes original work by approximately 173 artists (more than 20,000 items) and comprises more than 1,000 linear feet of material. Spanning the course of the 20th century, it includes both serial and editorial cartoons. Among the serial cartoonists represented are: Bud Fisher, whose Mutt and Jeff was the earliest
successful daily comic strip; Mort Walker, whose Beetle Bailey anticipated the changing notions of American masculinity and militarism during the Cold War; Hal Foster, whose lavishly illustrated Prince Valiant elevated the artistic ambitions of the genre; and Morrie Turner whose Wee Pals was the first comic strip to chronicle the lives of racial and ethnic minorities in American life. The editorial and political cartoonists represented in the collection include: William Gropper, whose leftist political cartoons in the Daily Worker raised working class consciousness during World War II; F.O. Alexander, whose everyman alter-ego "Joe Doakes" experienced the turbulence of the 1960s in the pages of the Philadelphia Bulletin; and Carey Orr, whose editorial cartoons appeared in the Chicago Tribune for nearly fifty years straight.

The physical cartoons in Syracuse's collection are as wide-ranging and diverse as the artists that created them, assuming countless shapes, sizes, and media including pencil, pen, and gouache on paper. Over the next two years, the project archivist will take steps to ensure that the cartoons are housed in archival-quality containers. He or she will also draft online, searchable finding aids so that curious individuals all over the world can access them. The NHPRC grant is exciting news for scholars who specialize in the genre, casual fans, and, of course, for Syracuse University, which has held many of these collections since the 1960s.

About the Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Library

With more than 100,000 printed works and 2,000 manuscript and archival collections, SCRC holds some of Syracuse University's most precious treasures, including early printed editions of Gutenberg, Galileo, and Sir Isaac Newton as well as the library of 19th century German historian Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886). SCRC's holdings are particularly strong in the 20th century; they include the personal papers and manuscripts of such luminaries as artist Grace Hartigan (1922- ), inspirational
preacher Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993), author Joyce Carol Oates (1938- ), photojournalist Margaret Bourke White (1904-1971), and architect Marcel Breuer (1902-1981). SCRC strives to be a "humanities laboratory" where librarians and scholars collaborate with the artifacts of history in an ongoing and vital learning process. Home to a new, state-of-the-art instructional seminar room, SCRC also regularly hosts exhibitions, lectures and classes focusing on its collections.

...

Sean MacLeod Quimby
Director, Special Collections Research Center Syracuse University Library
222 Waverly Avenue
Syracuse, New York 13244-2010
t. 315.443.9759
f. 315.443.2671
smquimby@syr.edu