CMCIG Spring 2007 Workshop

From year to year, the CMCIG makes an effort to hold its spring workshop in different parts of the state. In recent years, we have met at Bowling Green, Ashland, Kent, and Cedarville. If any of you would be interested in hosting the spring 2007 workshop, please be bold and volunteer! We do have a possible site lined up, but it would be very close to where we held last year's workshop (Cedarville). The CMCIG committee does the planning, but we would of course need help from the workshop site in arranging meals, breaks, etc. The spring 2007 CMCIG workshop will focus on collection development.

This would be an excellent way to showcase your institution, library, and CMC. We do enjoy seeing other CMCs and learning about their operation.

More on graphic novels

Browsing through ALA Direct this morning there was a link in the "Seen Online" section regarding graphic novels highlighted an Associated Press article from the International Heral Tribune; As more graphic novels appear in libraries, so do challenges. This article touches on issues regarding the graphic element in graphic novels and the important issue of these novels not always being for children. Graphic novel collections in academic libraries differ from graphic novels in public libraries. An academic library is purchasing to support a curriculum and a public library purchases to support the public. While the two overlap in many ways, each library is following a collection development and selection policy for purchases, there is a definite distinction in the resulting novels being added. From the article:

"Sales of graphic novels have more than tripled from $75 million in 2001. Milton Griepp, chief executive of ICV2, which tracks the pop culture marketplace, estimated libraries add another 5 percent to 10 percent to those retail sales figures."

"The Chicago-based American Library Association said it knows of at least 14 challenges relating to graphic novels in U.S. libraries over the past two to three years."

"The issue has become prevalent enough that the ALA, the National Coalition Against Censorship and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund earlier this year put out a set of recommendations for librarians looking to begin their own graphic novel collections but wanting to avoid controversy."

Tags: Graphic Novels, AlA Direct, Challenging graphic novels, International Herald Tribune

Fall 2006 Conference

If you were unable to attend Michael Pawuk's excellent session on graphic novels at the fall conference, a link to his PowerPoint presentation is now available at the ALAO website.

Back in business ....

With the exception of our site feeds, the CMCIG blog is officially back in business. A free counter, Statcounter, has been added. It will allow simple tracking including daily "hits." Should we need to determine if this project continues, daily statistics will allow us to determine basic usage of the blog.

Update: Several site feed "chicklets" have been added to the blog to make it easier to subscribe.

Tags: CMCIG, CMCIG blog, Statcounter, Feedburner

CMCIG blog glitch

Earlier this week, Greg Martin, CMCIG chair, was working on the Cedarville CMC blog and noticed a problem with the current CMCIG blogger template, the side bar items were gone and the blog scheme changed. We are not sure if the changes will show upon publication of a post. As luck would have it, Greg noticed the change before anyone posted about the ALAO conference and the information could be saved before testing our theory.

Therefore, this is a test post. If nothing happens, please excuse my blathering on about the issue. On the other hand, if you notice the side bar information has changed greatly (the CMCIG info is gone) and the color scheme different (any other color but the original green), we are working on the problem and hope to have it fixed on Monday.

Thanks for your patience.

Update: 11/11/06
The original CMCIG blog template has been restored and a free web statcounter installed.