Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year

Political junkies can kick back in the Annenberg Library Reading Room with BEST EDITORIAL CARTOONS OF THE YEAR, either the most recent edition (2011) or older ones going back to 1977. The series, showcasing humorous and/or thought-provoking cartoons of the day from US newspapers, is edited by Charles Brooks, past president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists and long-time cartoonist for Birmingham News. Each volume features award winning cartoons from the past year and an additional sampling of work by leading editorial cartoonists chosen for general excellence. Selections include both left and right leaning perspectives and together do a good job of recapturing the political and satirical flavor of history, as recent as 2010. Pictured here is one of my favorites in the 2011 edition appeared in The State Journal-Register July 11, 2010. It's by Chris Britt.

The call number for the series is: REF E 839.5 B45 but it's not where it's supposed to be. I have the volumes on a special in shelf in the magazine reading area to show them off. If you're confused just ask!

Editorial Cartoons on the Web

Here's a great little roundup of editorial cartoon resources on the web in a recent College & Research Library News. I always make a point to check their regular feature, Internet Resources, which appears in most every issue. It's an old fashioned annotated bibliography of web resources on a variety of topics. You can browse by topic or date. Editorial cartoons on the Web: Picturing politics, by Paul Cammarata, collects libraries and archives, museums, professional organizations and online exhibits of political cartoon resources for students, scholars and the general public.

Special Issues Roundup

Camera Obscura (Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies) is devoting two issues to Divas. Fabulous! Divas, Part I (Number 65, 2007) features divas of the screen, musical theater, soap opera and the life and times of Josephine Baker with tributes to Judy Garland, Grace Jones, Sylvester, Julie Andrews, Courtney Love, Isabelle Hubbert, and Angela Lansbury. Stay tuned for Part II (next issue).

Index on Censorship (Volume 36, Number 3, 2007) has a special 82-page section on Reporting the Middle East From Frontline Journalism to Reportage: How the Region Looks from the Inside.

afterimage has an Art & Activism Special Issue (Volume 34, Numbers 1 & 2) including the article "Tactical Media and the End of the End of History" which defines tactical media as "situational, ephemeral, and self-terminating. It encourages the use of any media that will engage a particular sociopolitical context in order to create molecular interventions and semiotic shocks that will contribute to the negation of the rising intensity of authoritarian culture." Other articles address global media ecology and documentaries that promote media activism.

EME (Explorations in Media Ecology) honors founding father of media ecology, Neil Postman, in its Volume 5, Number 1, 2006 issue. Leading off the issue is the keynote address delivered by Postman to the Speech Communication Association in 1973 where he discussed the new graduate program in media ecology he had just launched at NYU's School of Education.

Journalism Studies (Volume 8, Number 5, October 2007) looks at Cartooning America Post-World War II. Most of the articles in the issue were originally presented at a conference titled "Cartooning the USA: America Through the Pen of Political Cartoonists" held at the British Library in 2005 and organized by Phillip Davies who serves as the issue's guest editor.

The Cartoon Research Library at Ohio State University

Here's a neat research goldmine for a dissertation or two: The Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library, the largest, most comprehensive academic research facility in the nation documenting American printed cartoon art (editorial cartoons, comic strips, comic books, graphic novels, sports cartoons, and magazine cartoons). A portion of the Library is searchable, in a well developed database though it isn't clear from the site what percentage of total holdings is represented. Nine methods of searching are available: Creator, Publication, Title, Date, Topic, Shown, Genre, Format, or a combination of criteria. Playing around with it I was less successful with topics (most I tried don't exist and there's no list to browse) than I was with "Shown" which is very cool. It provides a crude little content analysis of the visuals through a series of tags. I punched in "TV" and retrieved 239 records tagged "TV set." Here's the first record that came up:

Creator: Priggee, Milt, 1953-
Title: In the spring a young man's fancy..
Genre: editorial cartoon
Format: original art
Topic: USFL
Shown: Man, TV set, easy chair, beercan, cupid, bow, hearts, bee, flowers, butterflies, quiver, arrows, bird, grass, baseball cap
Publication: Dayton Journal Herald Date: 1983-03-07 Media1: ink Media2: white ink MediaSupport: paper
FindingNumber: MP 2 55
Size: 28x38cm
Notes: Numbered 62B
Credit: Milt Priggee Collection, The Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library.

Included in the Cartoon Research Library holdings is the San Francisco Academy of Comic Art, acquired by the CRL in 1998 and containing approximately 2.5 million items. It appears this part of the archive is separate, accessible through another finding, not the database.

Founded in 1977, the Library has just turned 30 and is getting some well-deserved press. "Under the direction of curator Lucy Shelton Caswell [the CRL] has amassed 2.5 million comic-strip clippings, about 250,000 original cartoons and 51,000 serial titles, including comic books. Its book titles number 34,000," describes Ann Fisher in a recent Columbus Dispatch article on the Library.