Général

DONATIONS!
My favorite charity is the Arts on Paper Society, a not-for-profit gallery and bookstore in Montreal. As co-founder and (acting) President, I hope to offer artists a space to expose their works and contribute to the dynamic world of creation. Donations are welcomed at the following address:

Arts on Paper Society,
4826, rue Saint-Denis, Montréal
H2J 2L6 Canada

Olivier Charbonneau's English Language Graphic Novels List

for the Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec

Greetings!

Thank you for your interest in the list of graphic novels I built for the Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec in late 2004! I have had the opportunity to present this collection at the Canadian Library Association's 2005 Annual Conference and Trade Show - perhaps we even met there?

In a nutshell, the BNQ wanted to offer its adult (ages 12 and up) patrons the "best of the best" graphic novels of the last 20 years. To meet this expectation, I built a citation database in MS Access to compile all the winners and the nominations of comic book/graphic novels in the last 20 years. With this data in hand, I selected works with the most wins and nominations, as well as all works from creators with many wins. I completed the list with titles recommended in different sources, like articles and reviews.

Here is the list of awards compiled in my database:

Harvey Award Winners, given yearly at the MoCCA Art Festival in New York City
Will Eisner Comic Industry Award, given yearly at the Comic-Con International in San Diego, CA
Ignatz Award Winners, given yearly at the Small Press Expo in Bathesda, Maryland

In any case, I have attached many files to this web page, all you need to do is click on the file name to download it. WARNING: you may only use these documents to facilitate the selecting process for a non-profit library AND if you send me a thank you letter. Here is my address:

Olivier Charbonneau
Webster Library, room LB-279
Concordia University
1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
Montreal, Quebec
H3G 1M8 CANADA

This being said, the Excel files contain the list or recommended titles, whereas the PDF documents contain print-outs from the Access database. In any case, here are the files:

2004-08-03_BNQ_Final.xls: This is the list. If you experience any problems with this list, please do not hesitate to contact me;
2004-09-29_BNQ_Final-ComicStrips.xls: This is the list of comic strips – not as useful;
bnq_ListByWins.pdf: This is an output from my citation database – it shows the documents sorted by the number of wins and nominations. The initial selection tool for the collection;
bnq_ListByTitle.pdf: List sorted by title of the document, just included for your information;
bnq_ListByPublisher.pdf: List sorted by publisher, just included for your information.

Please feel free to use and circulate this list – as long as the person using or receiving it uses it for a non-profit library and agrees to send me a thank you letter.

I hope my list is useful for your selection! Many Cheers!

Olivier Charbonneau

PS. For those of you who wish to know more about graphic novels, I am organizing an international conference for librarians in April 2006 in conjuction with Blue Metropolis, a literature festival in Montreal. Keep you eyes posted on the Blue Metropolis website for an announcement soon...

QUESTIONS FROM LIBRARIANS:

"How do I determine the appropriate age group for a graphic novel?"

This is a difficult question to answer - the quick version is that there is no silver bullet. An imperfect method is to look at the Imprint, Publisher or collection of the work. This is not a perfect rule - comics creators are rogues if they are anything!

Superheroes are usually "clean" although there have been developments in recent years. For example, DC Comics is trying to target the adult market with its Vertigo imprint - so Batman published under Vertigo may be a little daring for younger minds... On the other hand, DC has a Wildstorm imprint that it tries to target to teens... try accessing this page for more details about DC Comics and its imprints.

Of course, you would have to look at all publishers to understand their perspective, or take on the subject. The major "commercial/superhero" american publishers are: Marvel, DC Comics (Vertigo and Wildstorm), Image Comics and Dark Horse. On the underground/artist side of things, we can find Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly, Top Shelf, NBM and a slew of smaller publishers. This last bunch is really difficult to describe in one sweeping statement, you really have to look at each title.

On the Japanese side of things, most manga publishers (Viz and Tokyopop namely) have devised a rating system to aid librarians and parents with these questions. Take a look at these pages for examples:
http://www.tokyopop.com/browse/browseageratings.php

A final thought is to look at reviews and commentary on the titles. Some sites I like are:

I hope this gives you some indication to get you started in your quest for teen-reads!

How do I organize my collection of Graphic Novels?

Please be advised that OCLC, responsible for the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), has issued a discussion paper and draft schedule for Graphic Novels and other works of narrative art.

To this effect, Olivier Charbonneau has prepared A Comment on the Proposed Classification for Works of Narrative and Sequential Art (please click on the link to download the comment). Reactions and feedback may be forwarded to Olivier Charbonneau before April 19th 2005 or directly to Julianne Beall, Assistant Editor, DDC, before August 19th 2005.

Here is the link for the Discussion on the Draft schedule 741.5 Cartoons, caricatures, comics, graphic novels, fotonovelas.