Tag, You're It: Enhancing Access to Graphic Novels
Summary (4 min read)
Introduction
- Each year academic libraries acquire materials to build and enhance their collec-tions.
- This research explored graphic novels in academic library collections with a specific focus on social tagging and cataloging practices.
- Bibliographic records created by catalogers are the foundation of the traditional catalog, and now discovery tools provide another opportunity for access.
- Academic libraries are in the unique position to maximize access to library materials through social tagging.
- 2 LibraryThing is a service that enables individuals and organizations to catalog their resources and share that metadata.
Graphic Novels
- There is a wide array of definitions for graphic novels, and as noted by Amanda StegallArmour, defining this term is a “slippery slope” for librarians when working with readers who range from graphic novel novices to aficionados.
- 4 Catherine Labio contends that the phrase is misleading and detracts from the genre.
- In 2003, Francesca Goldsmith connected the literature aspects of graphic novels and wrote: Developed plotlines, complex characters, distinctive narrative stylistics, and rhetorical devices such as irony and symbolism are requisites for books the authors recognize as “literary,” whether they are talking about fiction or about fact.
- Certainly, what’s considered “literature” is much more than just a recapitulation of formula.
- ”11 Libraries, including public, school, and academic, are actively adding these materials to collections since patrons are eager to use these print resources.
Graphic Novels in Academia
- College students enjoy reading graphic novels and professors are integrating them into their curricula.
- Graphic novels not only meet users’ reading interests, but are useful in presenting historical and biographical topics.
- The advantages of using graphic novels in the curriculum have been well documented.
- The faculty reported that the use of graphic novels in their courses prompted engaged discussions among the students, including those that had previously been reluctant to enter into class conversations.
- 18 A recent study by Janette Michelle Hughes et al. found that adolescents demonstrated an increased interest and excitement in writing assignments using graphic novels to improve reading.
Graphic Novels and Language
- As libraries find themselves adding graphic novels to collections, they must determine the best method for making these materials available to users.
- The phrase graphic novel(s) is widely used both in natural language and in controlled vocabulary.
- The literature suggests that social tagging can provide access points that complement traditional cataloging.
- Only one faculty member preferred to use the term comics.
- Davis’ study demonstrates the importance of having the “current” terms available in the online catalog.
Discovery tools
- Social media has greatly changed user expectations, activities, and interest.
- While users’ preferred social media tools may change, the appeal of the tools’ shared environment and functionality remains consistent.
- To adapt to the changes, libraries are engaging staff and incorporating resources to keep up with users’ interests.
- Discovery tools facilitate the end user interface with a corresponding search utility for retrieving, displaying, and interacting with the content in a library catalog system.
- 26 Social tagging also offers academic libraries the opportunity to take advantage of the knowledge and expertise of the faculty, staff, and student populations on their campuses.
Social tags
- Social tags are a means of identifying and retrieving digitized information.
- Social tagging allows users to identify terms and phrases for specific information sources.
- This Web 2.0 technology is used in many social media applications including Facebook, Flickr, and HuLu, and provides a user-generated labeling on the Internet.
- Makani and Spiteri posited that these behaviors were the establishment of a folksonomy within a specific site and suggested that the sense of community and personal contributions strengthen the intellectual authority of the added terms.
- The rapid growth of Web, electronic, and digital resources has created a new and challenging set of information to be searched, retrieved, and organized.
LCSH versus Tags
- For a long time, libraries have used Library of Congress subject headings (LCSH) to enhance retrievability for the end user.
- Their study examined tagging in academic and public online catalogs that use LibraryThing in seven libraries hosting a variety of discovery tools and tagging systems.
- Scott Golder and Bernardo Huberman refer to this as “sensemaking.”.
- The strengths of social tags play to the weaknesses of subject analysis and indexing.
- Like social tags, the terminology in genre headings can provide increased access and discoverability of materials in online catalogs beyond what is provided by subject headings.
Research Questions
- As noted above, tagging and LCSHs provide needed metadata for users to access resources.
- While studies have compared the two access utilities they have mainly focused on content for metadata purposes.
- This study will review resource format and access, in particular graphic novels.
Methods
- This study was initiated to address these questions and test the practices of cataloging and the engagement of social tagging of graphic novels.
- By searching in library catalogs and discovery tools, the research attempted to identify specific metadata patterns.
- This review determined that 38 libraries (51 percent) offered users the option to tag records in either the online catalog or a discovery layer; the remaining 37 libraries (49 percent) did not.
- After this review the sample was reduced to 59 titles .
- Once the title list was created, the 59 graphic novel titles were searched in each of the 38 library collections to determine availability, whether the genre heading “graphic novels” appeared in the record, and if the records had been assigned graphic novel tags by users; information for each was documented for further analysis.
Graphic Novels in the Study
- The range for the holdings was zero (0 percent) libraries with the title to 32 libraries (84.2 percent) for the two Maus selections.
- Eleven (18.6 percent) of the titles were in at least fifty percent of the libraries .
Graphic Novels in Sample Libraries
- Results from the libraries’ catalog searches indicate that graphic novels are being added to the collections.
- The searches for the selected graphic novel titles (n=59) found that 668 graphic novels were cataloged in the 38 libraries, each of the study’s libraries contained at least six (ten percent) of the titles; with two libraries containing a maximum of 36 (61 percent).
- A distribution of the number of titles owned by the libraries showed that four libraries (ten percent) owned between zero and nine titles; twenty (53 percent) had between ten and nineteen titles; twelve (32 percent) had between twenty and 29 titles; and two (5 percent) had between thirty and 39 titles .
- The mean number of titles was 17.57, with a standard deviation of 7.5, and the median was sixteen titles.
Discovery Tools
- The social tagging of graphic novels will expand access capabilities to end users.
- All of the discovery tools clearly offered the user the ability to tag a record.
- (Note, one institution provided tagging at the start of the search, upon later review that capability had been discontinued).
- Thirteen (34 percent) offered users a search utility to retrieve tagged items.
- In these tools, the ability to refine a search required the user to first find a tagged graphic novel record in order to find similar records.
Number of Tagged Graphic Novels by Number of Libraries
- Two (5.2 percent) of the 38 libraries introduced tags using LibraryThing.
- These two libraries had 100 percent of their graphic novels tagged.
- This may not reflect local tagging behavior since these tags may have been created by a larger pool of users.
- While LibraryThing and other tagging tools offer the possibility of increased tagging activity, it may not necessarily be relevant for the target users at the local level.
- A closer analysis of the libraries that had graphic novel tagging activity (n=19) indicated that only a small percentage of the libraries’ titles were tagged.
Graphic Novels and Cataloging Practices
- The results found limited access to the sample titles using the phrase graphic novels.
- Of the 668 graphic novel records, 64 (9.6 percent) had titles with the phrase graphic novels in the genre heading.
- Further analysis of those 64 records showed that 39 (60.9 percent) records had been updated in WorldCat and include the genre heading “graphic novels.”.
- The origination of the genre heading placed in the remaining four (6.3 percent) records was not identifiable.
- A review of the sample libraries (n=38) found that 28 (73.7 percent) had at least one graphic novel record updated with an identifying genre heading.
Accessibility of Graphic Novels using Genre Heading or Tagging
- A review of the records was initiated to determine accessibility rates of the sample titles via genre heading or tagging options.
- Only 143 (21.4 percent) of the sample titles had access either through the genre headings in the bibliographic records or were tagged.
- There was an overlap of twenty (3.0 percent) titles that had both the genre heading and a graphic novel tag.
- The social tags offered slightly more added access than was offered in the bibliographic records alone.
- Traditionally, once a title has been added to an online catalog it is unlikely that the record would be altered unless a specific request was made.
Limitations
- The identification of “graphic novels” as a genre heading remains controversial.
- Many cataloging practitioners argue that graphic novels are a format rather than a genre, while others have advocated for the term’s use as a genre heading to improve access.
- The interest of this study focused on the accessing of graphic novels, and, as such, the use of Table 3 Number and Percent of Tagged Graphic Novels with Corresponding Genre Headings in Libraries with Genre Headings Libraries Number GNS Number with GN Percent with GN Genre Heading Genre Heading.
Conclusions
- The results of this study indicate that while social tags and/or genre headings did provide additional access to graphic novels, their use is limited across the study’s library population.
- This approach retrieved not only graphic novel titles but also materials about graphic novels.
- Libraries need to provide adequate search mechanisms to promote effective retrieval.
- The benefits of allowing social tagging in their catalogs and discovery interfaces are clear, given the potential pool of engaged users and resident experts on campus who will enhance records through this process.
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Citations
26 citations
8 citations
Cites result from "Tag, You're It: Enhancing Access to..."
...This is consistent with the conclusions drawn by Lawson (2009), West (2013), and Wetterstrom (2008) who all agreed on the important role social tags have in enhancing the catalogue by adding additional descriptions and access points which are more accessible for users....
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5 citations
Cites background or methods from "Tag, You're It: Enhancing Access to..."
...Examples include tags applied by readers of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code that were based on characters, locations, emotion and opinion (Weaver, 2007; West, 2013) similar to Desrochers, Laplante, Martin, Quaan-Haase and Spiteri (2016) who found, over three case studies, tags applied by users were…...
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...In the social tagging literature, terms relating to characters, settings (Carmen, 2013; Desrochers, Laplante, Martin, QuanHaase & Spiteri, 2016; Weaver, 2007; West, 2013), nouns, “compound tags” (Guy & Tonkin, 2006, “Tagging Observed” section, para....
[...]
...Examples include tags applied by readers of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code that were based on characters, locations, emotion and opinion (Weaver, 2007; West, 2013) similar to Desrochers, Laplante, Martin, Quaan-Haase and Spiteri (2016) who found, over three case studies, tags applied by users were associated with genre, personal opinion, author names, characters, settings, emotions, time period, categorical names or particular topics, among other aspects (Table 1 p....
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...However, items catalogued using standard cataloguing methods may become mislaid as the terminology and language spoken by users, that is not found with LCSH, is not applied to a record (West, 2013)....
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...West (2013) states that items with “unique publication formats, such as graphic novels, can be difficult to access via online catalogues and other library applications due to cataloguing and classification challenges” and that librarians are struggling to find the most appropriate metadata for…...
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References
Related Papers (5)
Frequently Asked Questions (8)
Q2. What are the future works mentioned in the paper "Tag, you’re it: enhancing access to graphic novels" ?
While it can not be determined from this data that the addition of genre headings contributed to the increased circulation, it points to an interesting topic for future research with this collection. By changing cataloging practice and adding this term into the heading, end users will have a stronger possibility of retrieving these materials. The benefits of allowing social tagging in their catalogs and discovery interfaces are clear, given the potential pool of engaged users and resident experts on campus who will enhance records through this process. Genre headings providing more intuitive terminology can be added to bibliographic records to offer an additional access point in the online catalog, when indexed.
Q3. How many titles were in at least one collection of the sample libraries?
Of the 59 titles, 54 (91.5 percent) were in at least one collection of the sample libraries; five (8.5 percent) were in none of the libraries.
Q4. What was the percentage of titles with the genre heading?
Of the 280 (41.9 percent) bibliographic records, forty (14.2 percent) had graphic novel tags and 44 (15.7 percent) had been cataloged with the genre heading.
Q5. What is the role of social tagging in academic libraries?
26Social tagging also offers academic libraries the opportunity to take advantage of the knowledge and expertise of the faculty, staff, and student populations on their campuses.
Q6. What is the benefit of adding a graphic novel term to bibliographic records?
Genre headings providing more intuitive terminology can be added to bibliographic records to offer an additional access point in the online catalog, when indexed.
Q7. What percentage of the libraries had graphic novels tagged?
A review of the sample libraries (n=38) found that 28 (73.7 percent) had at least one graphic novel record updated with an identifying genre heading.
Q8. What are the main reasons why graphic novels are difficult to access?
Materials with unique publication formats, such as graphic novels, can be difficult to access via online catalogs and other library applications due to cataloging and clas-sification challenges.