Good Morning

A Short History of America by Robert Crumb, Joni Mitchell

I read some more of This Book Contains Graphic Language Comics As Literature by Rocco Versaci. The second chapter is about comics memoirs. There are a lot of very interesting books mentioned in this chapter, One Hundred Demons by Lynda Barry, The Quitter by Harvey Pekar, The Playboy by Chester Brown, and Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. Alison Bechdel's story is quite interesting.

This is a short movie of Alison Bechdel drawing.

The third chapter of the book is about Maus by Art Spiegelman. The original drawings of Maus that appeared in RAW magazine are very different than the current graphic novel. The current graphic novel which won the Pulitzer Prize and the Harvey Award is much more minimalist. Art Spiegelman said he would not make Maus into a movie. The story is about Vladech, Art Spiegelman's father who is a Jewish holocaust survivor. It both tells the story of Vladech's experience of the holocaust and his relationships with his family. The book is very interesting to read. It is not an easy story.

Today has been very busy. They passed on most of the mail from the collection development librarians to me. I sorted through a number of catalogs and made recommendations from; Oxford University Press, Modern Language Association, and Baker and Taylor.

Along with lots of minor things to take care of, I have been very busy. This morning, I arranged to have some old law books discarded, talked to someone about the movie licensing agreement, checked in the business office about my healthcare coverage, and took care of a number of minor activities.

I really like Oxford University Press. Their reference books are surprisingly affordable compared to many other publishers. You can get a number of reference books for under $50 which is cheap for reference books. This is true of many of their dictionaries across a variety of subjects. Libraries are always looking for things which they can afford. Budgets are soon going to tighten if the economy gets worse.

Recently the Oxford English Dictionary celebrated its 80th Anniversary. Their blog has a number of special articles on this subject currently http://blog.oup.com/