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City HCID Comics Road Trip to the US Library of Congress

BL, City, AHRC CDP logos

Date: Tuesday 10 December 2019

Place: The Library of Congress, Washington, DC 

A trip home to celebrate the US Thanksgiving holiday with my family has also afforded me the first opportunity to talk about my newly-minted (2 months!) AHRC-funded PhD research working with City HCID in partnership with the British Library, under the supervision of Ernesto Priego and Stephann Makri (City) and Ian Cooke and Stella Wisdom (British Library). The studentship is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships Programme.

My research will focus on UK digital comics: the process from creation to consumption (and back again?). Part of the research will involve working with City HCID to reveal the reader’s or user’s contribution in this process, as well as participate in comics scholarship.

In addition, I will be working with the British Library’s UK Web Archive, in particular its UK Digital Comics archive. Digital comics creators can upload their work directly to the BL collection through the ComicHaus app. This collaboration with ComicHaus provides a ready-made avenue for communicating with comics creators and publishers.

Which brings me to or will bring me to the Library of Congress, in Washington, DC on Tuesday 10 December 2019. The Library also has its own Web Comics Archive, and is also currently hosting an exhibit of its print comics collection, “Comic Art: 120 years of panels and pages“.

LOC logo

I will give a talk on UK Digital Comics to the Web Archiving Interest Group will cover City’s comics projects and research, such as Parables of Care and The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship, as well as the work of the British Library. In addition, I will explain how my research fits in with the work of both institutions.

I hope to learn a lot from my visit. But I also want them to know of all the great work in the UK, and especially at City HCID!

 


Linda Berube is a PhD student at City HCID and the British Library and a member of the City HCID Comics, Games and Media Research Group. Her research is examining the use of tools, technologies and sharing of information in the production, publication, collecting and reading of web comics. After a career in the US in academic, law and public libraries, Linda came to the UK as a Fulbright Fellow and has since worked with the Legal Deposit Advisory Panel, as well as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Amnesty International.

Linda Berube

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