CMCIG Spring Workshop

ALAO's Curriculum Materials Center Interest Group will hold its annual spring workshop on Friday, May 18, 2007, from 8:30 until 3:45, at the Instructional Materials Center in the King Library of Miami University in Oxford. The workshop, "Dynamic CMCs: Tools to Improve Service," will feature the following sessions:

Weeding and Cooperative Collection Development
Sara Bushong, Bowling Green State University

Treasures of Children's Literature at Miami University
Janet Stuckey, Miami University

Children's and Young Adult Literature - the Favorites, Old & New!
Elaine Fultz, Centerville City Schools

The Care and Feeding of Library Student Assistants
Group discussion, led by Greg Martin, Cedarville University

Tour of the William Holmes McGuffey Museum on Miami's campus

Tour of the new Instructional Materials Center, King Library, Miami University

Annual (short!) business meeting
During the business meeting, we need to elect a new chair for the 2007-2008 academic year. Please consider becoming more involved with the CMCIG and ALAO by offering to stand for this position.

For more information, and to register for the workshop, please go to the workshop website.

CMCIG Spring Workshop

As the weather gets more and more wintry, we all need something to take our minds off the cold. What better solution than to plan on attending the Spring 2007 CMC Interest Group workshop? The workshop will be held this year in warm and sunny southern Ohio at Miami University in Oxford on Friday, May 18. The workshop will be devoted to collection development and will include a tour of Miami's new Instructional Materials Center and a visit to the William Holmes McGuffey Museum (http://www.units.muohio.edu/mcguffeymuseum/).

Please plan on joining your colleagues for the Spring Workshop.

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.