theanalogdivide

In the spirit of #fridayreads, I’m thinking about turning the end-of-week discussion over to more bookish topics. If this takes off, perhaps we can make this a regular feature.

So let’s get things rolling with a softball: are you a graphic novel fan? What were your favorite comics of the past year or so? I’m doing a talk at the Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo next week. (Let’s call the above slide a sneak preview.) During my spiel, I’ll examine the way graphic novels have gained wider acceptance in libraries, and how all the other innovations we push can benefit by following a similar path. Interspersed throughout I’ll be talking about some of my favorite funnybooks.

But I certainly haven’t read everything. What graphic novels do you recommend? Have you been championing any particular titles recently? Whether your tastes run to DC or Drawn & Quarterly, have at it. I’d love to hear your suggestions. And possibly swipe them for my talk.

(and if you’re looking for more #hcod stuff – don’t worry, more things are brewing. I’ll hopefully have at least one more blog post up this weekend.)

The #hcod issue has gone a long way toward demonstrating the passion and dedication librarians feel toward their collections. There have been some fantastic responses (not to mention some fantastic efforts to gather them all), and each day shows that our understanding of the issue is continuing to evolve.

But there’s a prevailing sense of “well, now what?” hanging over this conversation. All this noise is creating an opportunity for someone from HarperCollins to reach out to us. It’s up to them to make that happen, and we’ll see if any of these entreaties go beyond the PR boilerplate we’ve received thus far.

As something of an Open Thread Thursday discussion, I’d like to posit a couple of questions.

1. What does our ideal ebook lending environment look like?

2. What are we willing to pay for it?

Our ability to reconcile these two questions will go a long way toward showing us if a lending model for ebooks is even worth pursuing.

What do you think?