Word on the Street

News on comics and Dr. Frederic Wertham

Alexander Street's Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels continues to grow and garner praise from some of the most influential publications in the comics industry. Recently, comics editor Greg Urquhart spoke with ICv2 to discuss the creation of the online collection. You can read the full article here.

Libraries are also taking notice of the collection and using it to enhance there comic book collections. The Library of Congress boasts the country's largest collection of comic books, and they recently opened the personal papers of Dr. Frederic Wertham. Wertham, as you'll recall, authored Seduction of the Innocent, which paved the way for the Comics Code Authority and their ban on material deemed unsuitable for the public. A great article about Wertham and the Library of Congress was just published by Washington City Paper, and can be read here.

Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels is available to libraries and academic institutions worldwide. For more information, including a free trial and price quote, please contact sales@alexanderstreet.com.

New content added to literature collections

We've updated several of our literature collections with new titles from authors around the world. All new content is available to subscribers now in the following online collections:

• Black Women Writers - Over 4,600 pages of new content is available from authors such as Phyllis Wheatley, Sojourner Truth, Makeda Silvera, Tananarive Due, and others.
• Caribbean Literature - Close to 5,000 pages of new content has been added from authors hailing from Barbados, Martinique, Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad, and Cuba.
• Latin American Women Writers - Over 6,500 pages of new material has been added from Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Nicaragua, Mexico, Argentina, and other countries in Latin America. Included are several volumes of the periodicals A Mensageira (Brasil), Vide Femenina (Uruguay), and Semanario de las Señoritas Mejicanes (Mexico).
• South and Southeast Asian Literature - Over 1,600 pages of new content from authors such as  Manoj Das (India), Suniti Namjoshi (India), and Siew-Yue Killingley (Malaysia).

The above collections, as well as 4 others, are available and cross-searchable through Alexander Street Literature. For more information, or to request a free trial or price quote for any of our literature collections, please contact sales@alexanderstreet.com.

New MARC records sets available

Four new sets of MARC records have just been uploaded to http://marc.alexanderstreet.com. The new record sets include:

• Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels - This is the first set of book-level records for this collection, and it includes 133 records in MARC8 format.
• Black Short Fiction and Folkore, supplement 3 - This file includes 5 records representing 145 links to periodical sources.
• Contemporary World Music - The first set of records for this streaming audio collection includes 504 records representing 529 albums. This set is intended for customers in the U.S. and Canada only.
• Contemporary World Music, supplement 1 - This supplemental set includes 434 records representing 446 albums, and is intended for customers in the U.S. and Canada only.

Additionally, we've released several new lists of titles with URLs linking directly into our collections. Newly added title lists include:

• American Song (for customers outside of the U.S. and Canada)
• Classical Music Library (for customers outside of the U.S. and Canada)
• Classical Music Library (EMI titles available in select countries. Please view the spreadsheet for a complete list of territories where EMI content is currently available.)
• Jazz Music Library (for customers outside of the U.S. and Canada)
• Contemporary World Music (for customers outside of the U.S. and Canada)
• Smithsonian Global Sound^® for Libraries
• Alexander Street Literature
• Black Short Fiction and Folklore
• Black Women Writers
• Caribbean Literature
• Irish Women Poets of the Romantic Period
• Latin American Women Writers
• Latino Literature
• The Romantic Era Redefined
• Scottish and Irish Women Poets of the Romantic Period
• South and Southeast Asian Literature
• Counseling and Psychotherapy Transcripts, Client Narratives, and Reference Works

We will continue to produce MARC records for the collections listed above, but in the meantime the title lists are available at http://marc.alexandestreet.com.

New MARC records available

We've released 4 new sets of MARC records, which are currently available for download at http://marc.alexanderstreet.com. As always, our MARC records are freely available. You can also find MARC records for Alexander Street collections on OCLC WorldCat.

New record sets include:

• Latin American Women Writers, supplement 2 - This set contains 133 records with links to 133 sources, in MARC8 format. To date, we've released 428 records for this collection.
• Latino Literature, supplement 1 - This set contains 82 records with links to 82 sources, in MARC8 format. To date, we've released 1,150 records for this collection.
• Dance in Video, supplement 1 - This set contains 147 records with links to 161 works, in both MARC8 and UTF8 formats. To date, we've released 244 records for this collection.
• Alexander Street Literature, supplement 1 - Please note, this supplement is intended for customer who have the full Alexander Street Literature package including drama. The set contains 215 records with links to 215 volumes, in MARC 8 fomat.

You will also find an updated release schedule at http://marc.alexanderstreet.com. Please email marc@alexanderstreet.com with any questions or comments.

Expanded partnership with NINES

In an ongoing effort to improve scholarly access to digital humanities resources, Alexander Street Press has partnered with The Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship (NINES) and its sister organization, 18thConnect: Eighteenth-Century Scholarship Online, to enable cross-search access to all relevant eighteenth- and nineteenth-century content from Alexander Street online collections, including, most recently, The Romantic Era Redefined.

In addition to The Romantic Era Redefined, other Alexander Street Press collections indexed in the NINES and 18thConnect networks include The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries, Irish Women Poets of the Romantic Period, and Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period.

For more information, please read the press release.

If you'd like to request free trial access to The Romantic Era Redefined, or a price quote for your library, please email sales@alexanderstreet.com.

Graphic novel news

On August 8th, Fantagraphics founder and president Gary Groth spoke at the Sydney Opera House. The program, called GRAPHIC, also featured Neil Gaimon, Kevin Smith, and others. You can learn more and download the program on the Sydney Opera House's Web site, and see photos and videos on the GRAPHIC Facebook page. In addition to publishing The Comics Journal, Gary Groth is an advisor on Alexander Street's Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels.

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If you haven't yet read Library Journal's graphic novel Q&A, you can find the full article here. In Q&A: Librarianship's Graphic Novel Experts, Martha Cornog talks with librarians who have recently published books on comics and graphic novels. They answer questions about being introduced to comics as kids, reading comics online, and the permeation of comics into popular culture.

Underground and Independent Comics has new content and features

Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels has been updated with thousands of pages of new comics and enhanced features that make the collection even more powerful. Underground and Independent Comics currently features about 32,000 pages of content, and is growing to include more than 75,000 pages upon completion.

Recently added content includes 45 new issues of The Comics Journal, which has never before appeared in a searchable, digital format. Also available now is Seduction of the Innocent by Dr. Frederick Wertham, which led to the Senate hearings that led to the formation of the Comics Code Authority.

Newly added features make the collection make it even easier to search and browse. The text of all secondary materials, including The Comics Journal, us now fully searchable. There are also new browse categories, including "Character", "Subject", and "Genre".

You can now follow our comics editor on Twitter @Urqness.

Underground and Independent Comics is available to libraries and academic institutions worldwide. Email sales@alexanderstreet.com to request a free trial and a price quote for your library.

Try Underground and Independent Comics for free

The release of Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels has generated a lot of buzz in both the comics and library communities. From tweets to blog posts, everyone seems to be talking about the first scholarly, primary source collection devoted to the study of adult comics.

Now you can try Underground and Independent Comics for yourself. Cheryl LaGuardia's E-Views blog is offering free access to the collection through July 15th. You can also read the Alexander Street press release here.

If your library would like a price quote or extended trial access, please email sales@alexanderstreet.com.

Undergound and Independent Comics is live!

Our newest online collection, Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels is now live. Quickly growing to include more than 75,000 pages of primary materials and 25,000 pages of interviews, criticism, and journal articles, Underground and Independent Comics is the first-ever scholarly, primary-source collection dedicated to the study of adult comic books and graphic novels.

Access the collection now, registration free, through Friday May 21st!

URL - http://comx.alexanderstreet.com
username: comics
password: sneakpeek

Beginning with the works that inspired the first underground comix from the 1960s and encompassing modern sequential artists such as Dan Clowes and Los Bros. Hernandez, Underground and Independent Comics shows the evolution and development of an art form. From the shocking and explicit work of young artists exploring newfound freedoms to intricate and beautiful designs of aesthetic craftsmanship, the comic book has shown itself to be a medium capable of both the offensive and the sublime.
 
Comics have become an increasingly popular area of academic study, and yet the typical library has only a small selection of graphic novels in the catalog. Underground and Independent Comics solves this problem, collecting thousands of comics—many extremely rare and hard to find—in one, easy-to-use online collection.
 
Included are influential works of visionaries such as Will Eisner and Harvey Kurtzman; underground artists including Gilbert Shelton, Trina Robbins, and Vaughn Bode; and modern masters such as Peter Bagge, Kim Deitch, and Dave Sim. The collection includes original material from the 1950s to today along with interviews, commentary, theory, and criticism from journals, books, and magazines, including The Comics Journal.

To request a free trial or price quote for your library, email sales@alexanderstreet.com.

New literature from around the world

In February, over 20,000 pages of new content was uploaded to Caribbean Literature, South and Southeast Asian Literature, Latin American Women Writers, and Black Women Writers. These four collections are part of the cross-searchable Alexander Street Literature, which currently contains over 250,000 pages of poetry, short fiction, and novels.

Highlights in the newly added literature include:

Caribbean Literature

• The Games Were Coming by Michael Anthony (Trinidad)
• Busha's Mistress by Cyrus Francis Perkins (Jamaica)
• La Peregrinacion de Bayoan by Eugenio Maria de Hostos (Puerto Rico)

South and Southeast Asian Literature

• The Scarecrow and the Ghost and Under Orion by Keki N. Daruwalla (India/Pakistan)
• Bones by Mahadai Das (India/Guyana)
• Handwriting: Poems by Michael Ondaatje (Sri Lanka)
• Jaya Ganga: In Search of the River Goddess by Vijay Singh (India)
• Tomorrow and Other Poems by Lhasang Tsering (Nepal/Tibet)

Latin American Women Writers

• Tres palabras y una mujer . . . by Lucila Palacios (Venezuela)
• Rito Pagão by Rosalina Coelho Lisboa (Brazil)

Black Women Writers

• A Brave and Startling Truth by Maya Angelou (United States)
• Drawn in Colour by Noni Jabavu (South Africa)
• Women Writing Africa: The Northern Region (v. 4) by various authors. The entire Women Writing Africa set is now available in Black Women Writers.

For more information on these individual literature collections, or the Alexander Street Literature package, please email sales@alexanderstreet.com. Free trials and price quotes are available to libraries upon request.