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I had a terrific response to the shelving Manga question. You guys are absolutely the best! Thanks for all your great responses and tips. It is so wonderful to get different ideas that you had never considered before! Here's what I received. We put them in a separate section, near our fiction collection and labeled them GFX FIC XYZ (with XYZ being the 1st three letters of the author's last name. We still have comic books (Garfield, Doonesbury, etc. in the 741 section). We used GFX as a stand in for "graphic novels." We have had Manga for 2 1/2 years now so we have quite a collection! And they are SO POPULAR that we have them on a shelf by themselves [under the globe.] Ours have 741 on the spine label, too. As a matter of fact, many of them don't ever get back on the shelf because the students check them out before we can re-shelve them. So we have a small book truck near the circulation desk that we put the Manga returns on and just don't even bother to reshelve them at this point. It's a remarkable phenomenon that's occurred and good PR for the library, I believe. I made a new section called Graphic Novels, and the prefix is GN. I have an area that has our small everybody collection (I am a jh so don't have many,) our books in Spanish, and our story collection. I have a couple of shelves in that area marked GN. Most of mine are 741.5 which is also where Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield, etc. are located. You are right about popularity. And for me it is often students that don't read anything else or special needs kids. I'm pretty involved in the comic/graphic novel community and the way you want to do it (also the way I do it) is their preference. They do not appreciate the idea of their work being isolated from "real" literature and cataloged in a way that is totally different than media of any other type. (Of course if it is a factual historical manga or something of that nature, it goes under its normal Dewey number.) I don't know why the DDC people continue with this type of odd cataloging that does not follow suit with virtually any other type of item. I believe this goes hand in hand along with the recent discussion of shelving by AR number. It's not not true solid librarianship. Cataloging things by the number of the media they appear in, or the format of their content, is just as short-sighted and un-library-like in my mind. We don't assign all videos the Dewey number for video technology, for example. We catalog the content, not the style. We may assign them a prefix and store them separately, because they are difficult to shelve with books, but this is not the issue with graphic novels. I wrote to Follett about this issue last year, as a matter of fact. We have 'em in 741.5 (Hardcover)and shelved separately in paperbacks. I think the best way to shelve them is to break them out completely, since they're a pretty unique beast. On my wish list is a piece of stand alone shelving large enough to house all my graphic novels/manga. Then, I could have them all in one discrete collection. I shelve mine in the "series" section. Ours are among the fiction books by author. I have a new category with the call number Comic. They are shelved close to the magazines for check-out. Brenda I created a new section for graphic fiction. My spine labels all say GRA FIC. The kids who read these know what they're looking for. They like having all the graphic novels together in one separate section. Since Manga is art art style, 741 would be appropriate for the How to draw Manga books. Where the book is simply a fiction story with Manga-style drawings, I'd put it in FIC, as you suggest. I think Follett may just be putting all of them in 741 based on the drawing style, so when your books and data disk arrive you may need to change a few things. Guess that's why we import the records into an entry collection first. I've gotten a few Manga books, and discovered that they weren't very well made. Several of them fell apart with a year or two, and a couple were just plain stolen. Anyway, I haven't purchased any more for a couple of years, and I probably ought to get some this year. Perhaps you could post a list of titles and ISBNs of some of the better books (those that kids can actually read more than twice before the book is ready for the trashcan). The little we have is shelved with 741.5. However, we have an area right near our front entrance where we pull the entire 741.5 section and display these books for most of the year. We put a sign in the regular shelving area that directs patrons to check the display area in case they missed it coming in. Students seem to like this set-up in our particular situation. Like you indicated, the books seem "lost" otherwise. We do put them back in proper shelving order for inventory purposes. Unless they are true nonfiction, I put all my graphic novels in a special section at the end of Fiction. They get aspecial Spine sticker so they stand out and don't get shelved with regular fiction. Before I began work in a branch of my public library, the graphic novels were intershelved by call number among the adult non-fiction. A few of the kids knew where they were and would get them for the other kids. To keep them in order, they were way above the reach of the majority of the kids that wanted to read them. As a result, the area was either in a constant state of dishevelment, with books falling over and all over the floor, or the books weren't used at all because the kids were chased away from the adult section. As the YA librarian, I was distressed that something so important to the kids was so isolated. I wanted the graphic novels in my YA section, and my manager agreed, but we had no available shelf space. I looked around in the basement and found an old wooden magazine display stand slated to be tossed out. I cleaned it up, put it in the YA section, and arranged the tall graphic novels in it. I didn't bother trying to keep them in any sort of order -- I just made sure they could be seen. When we got more than could be easily displayed, I made sure the ones that were less popular had plenty of face time before getting rid of them. The graphic novel section was about the most popular thing in the library. The kids had easy access to their favorite books, we both had a great central place to put them, and I didn't have to worry about keeping them in order. Eventually, I added other tall cartoon books (like Garfield), how movies are made books, and how-to-draw-manga books to this display. The kids ate them up! Loved the "new" books! I added a couple of the how-to-draw-"regular-things" books, but they didn't take to those as well as the drawing manga books. The smaller ones, generally in series like DragonBall Z or Peach Girls, I put in a double-sided, two-shelf stand. I did my best to keep these in some sort of order. It wasn't difficult -- alphabetical by series title, then by number. The kids were able to help keep them in order, too. This was placed next to the other display, so all my graphic novels were together, easily accessible by the kids, and, again, it wasn't a nightmare for me to keep in any sort of order. We told our page how it was done so he would automatically pull out any graphic novels and put them in my section (I voluntarily did all YA shelving so I could maintain circulation stats) and not put them on the shelf by their call number. Having designated stands like this helped keep the graphic novels out and on display, giving the kids easy access. It helped the kids browse and see the new titles because they'd have to move books around to find what they were looking for. And it helped me keep the collection under control. I could easily tell when it was time to get rid of things because the collection outgrew the shelving we allotted to it. Of course, since it was so extremely popular with the kids, and we didn't have to support a curriculum, I was able to expand the shelving a bit. And some of the more popular ones I did tape together several times before finally getting rid of them, but overall, we kept it down to that little bit of shelving that had been slated to be destroyed. I have just a few for 9-12 HS which I place on a display case that is close to the clerk's desk so that they have a place of prominance & for security Our collection is still fairly small. We have them on a wire display rack near our circulation desk. We get a lot of traffic in that area and many of our study hall students like to read them when they are in the library. Sometimes they'll even actually check them out ;) I put a special label on them and in a special section (GRN for graphic novels) We had a situation much like this a year ago, and we didn't want them mixed in with Fiction for then they would be separated by author, etc. And manga/comics/graphic novels can all have the same story line and yet have several different authors! We also didn't want them in our non-fiction, for we have a k-8 school and didn't want them next to the K age appropriate books so easy to find. So! We made up a new category, GN for graphic novel. All books under this designation have a label showing GN and the first 2 letters of author last name. Since they are all together as GN, finding them with same story line but different author name is not as difficult as it may seem! Vicki, we pull our Manga and other graphic novels out of the general collection more so we can have them all in one spot for ease in finding (a la the AR controversy) AND for us putting them away easier. They are very popular and we find them all over the library. It is easier to collect them all and put them back in the spinners we bought just for them. At the beginning of the year they are all organized by series, type or author -- but that quickly disappears and they are just placed on the spinners. We try to maintain one spinner as Manga and the other as non-Manga. Periodically we go through the spinners and reorganize -- which gives us an opportunity to see what might have walked, what's been out way too long, what needs repair, or anything else to keep the collection alive. The second reason is probably a better justification. Our spinners of graphic novels are located very close to the circulation desk. This allows us to keep a closer eye on them and (hopefully) prevent some from disappearing. Since we still lose 15-20 a year we are not willing to intermingle them and have an even harder time accounting for them. Thus, we catalog them under GRA for graphic novels. Our true comics (Garfield and Dilbert) are in the 741's -- NOT novels. As we maintain our paperbacks separate from the hardbound fiction books, it is probably easier to "justify" another location for another type of book. In reality, it is easier to be able to show students the almost empty shelf where these books are supposed to be than to have students tearing up the shelves looking for them in among other titles. Consequently, beign a practical person and having an assistant only 2 days a week, I add GN Above whatever cataloging comes on the titles. The circulation is tremendous and so this arrangement makes life much easier for patrons and staff. I prefer to house them near the front desk in a highly visible spot since they are "high theft" items and will vanish quickly. Ideally I would keep them on a cart by the front desk and roll it into an office or back room the end of the day so it is less accessible to thieves when you are not there. Vicki Nelson Librarian Odessa High School Ector County ISD -------------------------------------------------------------------- Please note: All LM_NET postings are protected by copyright law. You can prevent most e-mail filters from deleting LM_NET postings by adding LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU to your e-mail address book. 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