I’ve posted about growth of the manga collection before, but had some questions about this recently. So here’s an update!
Annual figures for volumes/issues (item records) of Japanese language manga cataloged as part of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum since 1999 are below. Records for these works are all available in the Ohio State University Libraries catalog. A browsable search is currently available by searching on keyword=manga and location =Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum.
- July 2012: 17,938
- Oct 2011: 17,399
- Oct 2010: 16,265
- Dec 2009: 15,462
- Oct 2008: 13,021
- 2007: 11,624
- Nov 2006: 10,413
- 2005: 9,688
- 2004: 8,473
- Jun 2003: 7,892
- Jun 2002: 6,188
- Jun 2001: 5,480
- Aug 2000: 3,588
- Jun 1999: 2,366
Note: I started collecting Japanese manga at Ohio State actually in the mid-80s, but don’t have figures until 1999.
The figures above are for Japanese language materials. We also have about 1,000 volumes of Chinese translations of manga (published in Taiwan) and extensive holdings of English translations, neither of which are included here.
The current Manga Collection Development Policy is published on this site. As the policy is implemented (progress is underway!), it may become harder to gather statistics for the collection, since many manga volumes will be part of general Japanese language collections (not Japanese holdings within the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum).
An out-of-date “Manga Collection Report” which I wrote in 2001 (and revised in 2002) is now archived at the Internet Archives’ WayBack Machine. It reflects approach to building this collection at that time.
Another reference for anyone interested in the history of this collection is Alison Raab’s thesis, “Manga in Academic Library Collections: Definitions, Strategies, and Bibliography for Collecting Japanese Comics” (2005) which I discussed in an earlier post.
Also, Egami Toshinori discusses Ohio State’s manga collection in his book, Hondana no Naka no Nippon:
See especially Chapter 10: クールなニッポン―マンガ・アニメ. An overview of the book (and a video of a discussion that Egami participated in with Wada Atsuhiko at a bookstore in Japan) is available: http://kasamashoin.jp/2012/04/post_2268.html — they do not discuss OSU’s manga collection per se, but they draw attention to collecting of manga at North American research libraries in the middle of the video (ca 44:00 ~ 48:00)
