Creating an independent comics library

Canada Comics Open Library has been in our Regent Park space just about 9 months now, and we recently held a crowdfunding campaign to be able to pay rent and insurance for the next year as well as make our collection circulating. Although we did not reach all of our larger goals, we were able to meet our main goals to run for the next year (with circulation!), and I am so proud and thankful for all of the support we’ve had this year from volunteers and community members.

I wanted to share a presentation I made earlier this year about the politics of this library project, comics librarianship, and traditional library cataloguing and classification.

The following link will take you to a post on the CCOL blog, the script from my presentation at the 2nd Annual Conference of the Comics Studies Society COMICS/POLITICS on July 25th (Community Day), at Ryerson University. This paper was written by me, in collaboration with my partner Brandon Haworth:

Reading the Shelves: The Politics of Creating a Diverse Comics Library

If you have any feedback or suggestions, please feel free to comment or contact me! If you are in Toronto, come visit us at the comics library!

(Above: participants at one of our workshop events at CCOL this year)

Here is a bit more about the library project:

“Canada Comics Open Library (CCOL) is a non-profit and volunteer-run comics library located in Regent Park, Toronto, Ontario. CCOL was founded in the springtime of 2018. Our mission is to help make comics more accessible while increasing representation of marginalized communities in comics, with a focus on BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour), LGBTQ+, disabled, and women creators. We are working to achieve our mission through our library collection and space, online resources, and community events.”

You can also follow CCOL: