They come from all over the ethnic patchwork of this neighborhood of modest-to-fancy brick houses and square green lawns in the borough of Queens, New York: East Asian, South Asian, Caribbean, African-American, Jewish. (Only one speaks Japanese at home.) But at the library, they identify as otaku — Japanese slang for manga aficionados — and their divisions run purely along manga lines. Fans of shonen action manga challenge partisans of romantic shojo; experts debate the merits of series like Full Metal Alchemist, Death Note and Fruits Basket. Readers pool their knowledge to puzzle out magic spells, ninja moves and warrior codes that dominate the manga universe.
Manga clubs have coalesced in libraries in various Queens neighborhoods — Flushing, Jamaica, Long Island City — and the genre has colonized young-adult rooms in libraries around the country.
Now, librarians write books and journal articles to figure out how to tap into this powerful vein of interest that seizes early adolescents just at the age when they are most likely to drift away from libraries.
The manga mania, like so much else in the city during the recession, is threatened by budget cuts. Beginning in July, proposed cuts would reduce library staff by more than one-third and opening hours by nearly half, library officials say. Thirty-four community libraries would be open only two or three days a week. New York Times reports.
because manga are not library friendly.
I’m always asking if we should buy all 150 volumes of this title for each branch or just buy 1-30 for this branch and 31-75 for that branch… they don’t make it easy.
and then, should you replace the missing ones or the damaged ones because they fall apart so fast?
it can become a never-ending investment of money and time if don’t plan your collection or if you expand too much to collect everything the kids want.
A “floating collection”
A “floating collection” sounds like the best solution to your dilemma. Instead of worrying about it by branch, you could say you’ll have x number of copies in the system for each series you collect and replace damaged ones to bring you back up to that level.
works for some kids, but not all.
you can see the lights dim when you tell a kid the book isn’t here but he can get it in a few days… he wants it now or not at all…
if we could Netflixify everything and everyone understood it, then we could store most of our books where ever we had room and just ship them as needed…