I’d like to discuss the implications of digitisation for comic book collections, as well as the importance and urgency (and lack) of a unified comic book digital library initiative.Though I am not a professional librarian or an expert in digitisation, I’d like to create bridges between the fields of librarianship and comics scholarship.
The session seeks to set the basis for a debate about questions of curation, preservation, digital preservation, text encoding (Comic Book Markup Language) and metadata in the specific field of comics scholarship.
Participants will be given physical copies of comic books of different genres and cultures to handle and explore and attempt the encoding of particular features.
The session seeks to create awareness of the media specificity of comic books as printed/physical material and to put to test the limitations, advantages and challenges of comic book digitisation. It is also hoped the particular instance of comic books will be helpful to illuminate other areas of arts and humanities research.
It is not necessary to be an expert in comic books to participate; newcomers to the medium are encouraged to attend.
I hear that comics look amazing on the iPad — I wonder if that’s partly because they’re marked up in CBML?
Hi Amanda! Thanks for your comment… some do look amazing… but I’m not sure they are marked up in CBML! That would be quite something. Now that you mention it, I’m also particularly concerned about how comics bought for the iPhone and iPad can be preserved, and how questions of ownership and readership are modified by comics apps.
Hello Ernesto –
I’m a MA student at New School in New York currently writing a thesis that sounds disturbingly similar to the one described on your Tumblr site. I’m mostly interested in the interplay between comics form and comics culture, which can be seen by looking closely at the digital comics translation. I’m drawing heavily form Benjamin, who I can see you also have a thing for. I would very much like to get in contact with you. You can reach me at andrew(dot)nealon(at)gmail. Would you be so kind as to drop me a line?
thanks