Tomorrow morning I will join colleagues from CIC universities for a discussion of manga in libraries in a special session of the Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs. Below I am posting the schedule and our proposal text.

Among other things we will be discussing our engagement with students and scholars using manga for teaching, learning, research, and outreach. Here are some websites we will be introducing:

Setsuko Noguchi’s libguide: http://uiuc.libguides.com/mangaresources

Chiaki Sakai’s libguide:http://guides.lib.uiowa.edu/manga-1

This blog (with newly revised links — still needs more work; suggestions are welcome!):https://library.osu.edu/site/manga

NCC’s Image Use Protocol site: http://www.nccjapan.org/imageuse/index.html

We will also review some of the issues that Alison Raab raised in her Master’s thesis–
“Manga in Academic Library Collections: Definitions, Strategies, and Bibliography for Collecting Japanese Comics” (2005)
http://etd.ils.unc.edu/dspace/handle/1901/233

************ MCAA Special Event *************

▶ 9:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. WEXNER CENTER*, Seminar Room 021L
(Adjacent to Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum)

SPECIAL SESSION – “Manga in Libraries: A Roundtable Librarians”

Moderator: William Londo, Michigan State University
Organizer: Maureen Donovan, The Ohio State University

Participants:
Setsuko Noguchi, University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign
Chiaki Sakai, University of Iowa
Naomi Shiraishi, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Mari Suzuki, University of Michigan
Maureen Donovan, The Ohio State University

▶ 10:30 a.m. – 11:15 a.m.
WEXNER CENTER*, Reading Room of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum

SPECIAL SESSION – Library Show and Tell “Introduction to The Ohio State University’s Manga Collection”
Conducted by Maureen Donovan, The Ohio State University

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Manga (Japanese comics) were excluded from collections of academic
research libraries until very recently. While this situation has
changed dramatically of late, and manga are now included in most, if
not all, Japanese collections in large academic libraries, librarians
have not had opportunities to discuss issues related to incorporating
these popular culture resources in our collections with each other or
with the faculty and graduate student researchers who use them. The
MCAA conference at Ohio State University, which has the largest manga
collection in the nation, provides an excellent opportunity to
initiate such discussions. RT participants will prepare background
papers, online guides, or other materials for circulation prior to the
MCAA meeting to ensure lively discussion. We propose to divide time
allotted for our Round Table into four sections:

1) Selecting and collecting manga (What are the options for
collecting? Purchase popular titles? Seek manga that students are
unlikely to discover? Look for link-ins with local academic interests?
Are special categories of manga being collected? Would coordination
among collections ensure broader coverage?);

2) Teaching with manga (How can one use manga-related examples in
teaching database searches? What skills can be taught in a freshman
seminar on manga? How can libraries best support courses on manga in
the curriculum?);

3) Reference and research support for manga (Are there essential
reference resources for manga that should be in libraries or is online
information adequate? Is interlibrary loan working well for remote
access to manga at CRL and other libraries? How can we support
students who want to use manga as primary sources for research papers?
Does NCC’s Image Use Protocol help with copyright permissions?) ;

4) Developing web guides, blogs, or wiki resources about manga. (What
strategies work best for reaching out to potential users? For
publicizing the library’s collections?)

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