Indiana U./U. of Illinois: Comic Book Readership Archive Awarded Two Grants

From the Indiana Daily Student:

The Comic Book 
Readership Archive is studying a different kind of fan-writer relationship, specifically comic book readership and fandom.
Information and Library Science Associate Professor John Walsh started CoBRA in 2014 to create a database to preserve the fan culture of comic books.
Walsh and his colleagues, University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science Associate Professors Kathryn La Barre and Carol Tilley, were recently awarded the New Frontiers of Creativity and 
Scholarship grant as well as the Research Consultation Fellowship from the Institute for Advanced Study to fund the project.
“One purpose is to get a sense of who comic book readers and fans were,” Walsh said.
The project focuses on Marvel Comics from 1961 to 1973.
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Richard Higgins, a master’s student at IU in information science, did most of the initial data collection.
“It’s valuable scholarship on material and a reading culture that has hardly been touched,” Higgins said in an email.

Read the Complete Article
Additional Info: La Barre, Tilley, and Walsh to build digital comics archive (via U. of Illinois GSLIS)
Additional Info: Comic Book Readership Archive (CoBRA) Receives New Frontiers of Creativity and Scholarship Grant (via Indiana University)

Filed under: Data Files, Frontiers, Funding, Libraries, School Libraries