Manga presentation...?

[telophase]

My coworker is organizing the programming for a one-day conference for one of the districts within the TLA (Texas Library Association) - in other words, basically a mini-library-conference for libraries within North Texas. There are a lot of school and public libraries in this distract (well, as there are in all districts...), and he's asked me to do a one-hour presentation on manga.

The conference isn't until October 6th, so I've got a lot of time to plan. The community college it's being held at has smart classrooms - wired up with all sorts of stuff, so it can be as multimedia as I want, although I'll probably just confine myself to Powerpoint-y type things. :D

So: Imagine that I'll have an audience with a variety of experience with manga. There's bound to be some who know a decent amount about it already, and others who have no idea what this is, only that their patrons are starting to ask for it. What should I talk about and touch on? Any ideas will be helpful, brainstorming is good. :D

Comments

[rilina.livejournal.com]

Hmm, off the top of my head:

(1) Resources for doing selection and collection development--I think traditional reviews, etc, aren't so helpful. Especially when you want to know things like, "Is this series 50 volumes long?" before you commit to buying it.

(2) Doing manga/anime related programming and outreach: clubs, cosplay events, etc.

(3) Manga suitable for younger readers: selection for middle school and elementary school media centers tends to be much more problematic.

(4) Related materials people might consider adding to their collection: manga and anime magazines, anime DVDs, how to draw manga books, books on Japanese culture.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

And to add to #1, before I forget it - my mom volunteers at a library and is always prepping replacement manga for shelving because they get beat up so much and so fast. :D It'll be quite an investment. XD

[rilina.livejournal.com]

Shelving tends to be an issue too, because 18 volumes will go out at once and then come back at once. It makes alloting space to the collection an issue.

Maybe also an overview on manga, manhwa, OEL manga, etc?

Newbies may want some sort of "core collection" list; I'm sure that there have been articles on this in YALSA or VOYA, though I seem to remember laughing hysterically at the last one I saw.

There's also a good listserv, GNLIB, for librarians working with graphic novel collections. It's relatively low volume for a library listserv, which is one thing I like about it.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Good to know about shelving, since I'm so far from circulation that sort of thing never occurs to me. XD

Thanks! I think maybe a handout with resources would come in handy to give out. :D

[rilina.livejournal.com]

Our graphic novel collection is slowly taking over an entire wall of our teen section. The librarian keeps saying, "I don't want to weed a series that circs 15 times/year, but there's no more space!"

Also for your handout: I bet people would love a list of manga/graphic novel related awards, like YALSA's Great Graphic Novels list and the Eisners.

Something on flipped vs. unflipped? I was in a book club with some fellow library science students this summer; we read Fruits Basket 1, and most of them couldn't even get past the read-it-backwards part. I find this hilarious because I never actually hear teens complaining about having to learn to read them.

You might also want to highlight the various things publishers have done to make age rating easier, and alert people to things like the age rating changing a few volumes into a series (for example, Nana going from older teen to mature, etc).

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that's all nice stuff. Thanks! :D

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I think I definitely want to include some pictures from conventions and cosplay, just to show how much involvement there is in the fan scene associated with these Japanese pop culture trends that are coming to the US.

[rilina.livejournal.com]

My library is doing a cosplay contest (with DDR as a bonus attraction) and a manga drawing contest this summer, and I know from listservs that other libraries do things like mini-cons or cosplay chess.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Do you remember offhand some of the libraries that have done things like that? I could maybe contact them and get some info on what and how they did it. Hm...

[rilina.livejournal.com]

Robin Brenner was the one who brought it up on GNLIB; she's at Brookline Public Library right now.

I read about the mini-convention approach in this article:
MacDonald, Heidi. “Drawing a Crowd.” School Library Journal August 2004: 20-22.

Email me if you want more details on what we do at my library.

[rilina.livejournal.com]

Er, Robin Brenner brought up cosplay chess. Sorry, that was completely unclear sentence.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Thank you! And I think I will. :D

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

sarahtdl has organized a small convention with her library every year for a while.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Ooh, nice. Thanks! :D

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

She's very nice too.

[tprjones.livejournal.com]

Pictures are good, but I wonder if any of your cosplay friends in the area aren't busy that day and could turn up in person. Heh.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I don't think anyone would pay attention to me if there were bunnies and catgirls in the room! XDDD

[rayechu.livejournal.com]

Our library's biggest problem is that they order the strangest titles because the lady who orders doesn't know anything about manga. We don't have Deathnote, Fruits Basket, Bleach, or Naruto. We do have PHD Phantasy Degree, Ranma 1/2, and Oh My Goddess.

I haven't had the same shelving problems other than having to give manga it's own section because I donated 50 books to the library.

I know that none of the ladies I work with can pronounce Manga. They also do not feel the need to try and help the patrons that come in looking for manga. It feels like the manga gets the same attitude (if not worse) as the Harlequin romance novels. I am guessing a lot of it stems simply from the fact that they are foreign. Also despite the books having clear rating I am sure there will be parents that complain about the nudity and violence. So some discussion about how to deal with those problem patrons would probably be good.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Oh, I hate that MAYYYNga pronunciation! XD I think I'm probably starting the talk out with that. Mind you, I give "anime" the flat-A pronunciation and think that the people who say aaahhhhnime, which is probably closer to the correct one, sound froofy. XD But at least I acknowledge my hypocrisy!

Thanks!

[rayechu.livejournal.com]

Yep. That is how pretty much everyone around here says it. Oh! I also think you should talk about the books being flipped. Some of the volumes at my library have barcodes on the front. You may also want to talk about how the books are shelved. Everything else in the library is alphabetical by author, but we have the manga section by Title instead, as it made things much easier to find.

[vom-marlowe.livejournal.com]

More thoughts tomorrow, but I love me some conference handouts. What about a manga cheat sheet? Something with common manga terms, like 'shonen'. A small selection of best of (like Furuba, Bleach, and Saiyuki) with explanations and then something in categories, like romance/shojo manga, fantasy manga, etc?

If you were feeling really motivated, I'd say do some bookmark templates. You know, recommended manga, if you've read xxxHolic why not try...Insert Other Manga here, with some that cross over into YA book territory and/or back. Sort of if you love, erm, frex LJ Smith, why not try xxxHolic manga? Sort of thing.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Ooh, good ideas! :D Thank you!

[riofriotex.livejournal.com]

I have no helpful suggestions, but I'm wondering if we are in the same TLA district (5??). I'll have to come hear your talk!

Oh, I do agree though with some of the other suggestions that you need to cover some of the basics (pronunciation, read from back, etc.) because you'll have some people that know next to nothing about manga. I also think you should collect some stats about circulation. I think more libraries would carry manga if they realized just how much it circs! When I worked in a large public library, kids would check out armfuls, and bring it all back the next day.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I think it's 5 - the meeting's in Athens on October 6. :) Ooh, circulation numbers - yeah, that would be good. :D

I'll have to look through my archives - a year or more back I posted a link to some state (not Texas) library journal/newsletter type thing where a librarian wrote an introduction to manga and got almost every single aspect of it completely wrong. It would probably be good to dig that out and make sure I address those aspects. :)

[riofriotex.livejournal.com]

Oh bummer, we are in different districts. I'm in 7, and I just got the word that our meeting is September 29 (not sure where, but it's gotta be different 'cause Athens is too far east). I would love to get a copy/link to your presentation though!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Ah, well. :D I'll post whatever I come up with. :)

[arkanefyre.livejournal.com]

I did an hour long presentation on manga last year for the grade 5's in my school (I was in grade 11).

I talked briefly about how manga came to be; the history, in essence, really quickly for about ~20 minutes? I brought some of the different types of manga I had: shoujo, shouen, sci-fi, horror, gothic, etc. I brought manga in different formats: in the magazine, and in the toukoban form (and brought both japanese and english, to show the difference and similarities), art books and I brought some anime DVDs. Then I decorated the rooms with my anime posters and merchandises: plushies, figurines, Roy Mustang's glove (which they gleefully tried on), etc. I touched base a little on scanlations and cosplay.

I asked some voice actors (I commented on their journals) for a shoutout, and Kiba and Akamaru from Naruto did a 20 seconds clip that basically said hi to the grade 5s, and how he'll beat Naruto up, so be sure to stay tuned to the daily broadcasts. Then I showed the trailer for the new Naruto movie - the snow country one, I think.

I emailed all the manga publishing companies for promotional materials and desk copies of some graphic novels. I ended up with posters and stickers and lots of volume ones of different mangas.

And then if I had time left, I took questions, which there were tons. And that was my hour.

Hope that helped.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Oh, nice ideas! Thank you!

[snarp]

I don't know if this is actually a common worry, but one of my old supervisors didn't think the library should buy manga because "it would just get stolen." Maybe people would be interested in statistics about that (if you can even find such statistics)?

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Interesting point. I'll see what I can find out. :D

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Haha, the pronunciation thing. Please note the phonetic guide at the end of our handout, which I just added a link to on the manga/TESOL page. (We didn't use IPA because IPA for those two words looks almost exactly like the romaji for those two words, so we didn't think it would help. :P) Naturally, everyone who asked questions said "MAYNguh" anyway. Oh well.

And people did tend to be (overly) concerned about the flipping thing, so we had to reassure them that no one's brain would explode.