Who Am I?My name is Chris. I have been collecting comics since 1983,and reading them since at last 1977. I have been trained as an actor,a radio producer,a graphic designer,a web designer,and,most recently,a librarian. I have been doing graphic design and layout for various comic book related publications for TwoMorrows Publishing since 2001 and am currently the designer for Roy Thomas' Alter Ego. In my main occupation I serve as Digital Resources Librarian at the Flaxman Library at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. You can contact me at chris@chrisdaydesign.com | As my little photo essay was posted today as this week’s entry in Robot 6‘s “Show Us Your Shelf Porn”series I assume we will have a few new visitors stopping by after following the link in my entry. Welcome,welcome. Always happy to have a few new eyeballs to share my ramblings and images as I work on examining why and how I collect comic books. The essay on Robot 6 featured all new photos and thoughts,but you can find more of the same here on the blog. To get an introductory taste you can visit my About page or check out my very first entry for a sort of mission statement. If you’d like to see more photos of my library,especially earlier tours before “the great weeding”check out the shelf porn category. As for me,as it says various places I am a librarian and graphic designer. I currently work during the day as the Digital Resources Librarian at the Flaxman Library at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In the evening I do graphic design for TwoMorrows Publishing,mainly laying out Roy Thomas’Alter Ego eight times a year. And on the weekend,after a long absence,I do a little improv around the north side of Chicago. I’ve been reading and buying comics for far too long. I try to do a little writing here once a week and share little things between entries. So feel free to look around,check things out,and start any conversations you may want to. Thanks for coming! 
Time to toot my own home for a second. This blog and it’s purpose got a bit of a boost today from the blog Robot 6 over at Comic Book Resources. Their regular feature “Show Us Your Shelf Porn”was one of the webspaces which gave me some of the impetus to start up this little blog. Well,this week I got the opportunity to give a little back,and my library is the featured collection. I’ve been talking to them for a little while now and a week or so ago I sent them a brand new set of photos as well as a brand new tour/essay,focusing on the organization and construction of my shelves and some other issues that I haven’t necessarily had a chance to go into here yet. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to contribute to their blog and to share my thoughts,and this site,with the wider community. Thanks to editor Chris Mautner for the chance to share my thoughts and photos with the wider online community. So go on over and check them out. This link will take you directly to my entry. This link will take you to their main blog page. And this link will take you to other entries in the series. Continue reading Plug Time:I Showed The Robot My Shelf Porn More local press on people getting rid of their collections of stuff,this one focusing on selling to make money in the hard times. Tony Britton always thought of comic books as an investment. “When I first started collecting as a kid,I thought long term,that maybe I could use them to send my kids to college,”he said. Britton is 32,a native of Hyde Park. He was behind on his car payments;creditors are knocking at his door. Then there is the student loan to pay,the child support. And so Britton is cashing in the remnants of his 20,000-piece comic-book collection.
Needless to say,the theme of the article is “don’t expect to get anything for your stuff you thought was valuable.” You can read the complete article at the Chicago Tribune website. I was on “the internet” today and I learned about something today that I always innately understood but didn’t know that someone had put a name to it:Parkinson’s Law. To quote the anonymous scholars of Wikipedia “Parkinson’s Law is the adage first articulated by Cyril Northcote Parkinson as the first sentence of a humorous essay published in The Economist in 1955” It states “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” The article goes on to provide a variety of corollaries and further adages based on this Law,relating to everything from laws of supply and demand to computer science. One of these encapsulates the concept that had brought me to this page in the first pace:“Data expands to fill the space available for storage.” This is the concept,especially how it can relate to collecting and collectors,that I was trying to put into words. Day’s corollary to Parkinson’s Law:Collections expand to fill the space available to store them in. Continue reading Day’s Corollary;or,Filling The Space Available I think this is the start of a regular feature on PN6700:Temptations. No matter how much you want to stop buying,sometimes they make something so beautiful it is hard to say no. At least in this case I have said no so far:  Photo borrowed from the Drawn &Quarterly Blog No,I am not linking to a picture of a lady (publisher Drawn &Quarterly‘s publicity assistant,Claire Bennett). Rather,to my shame,I am sharing a photo of the two fine publications she holds in her hands. One is the preliminary cover for a collection of George Sprott:(1894-1975) ,the serial by Seth that recently ran in the New York Times (I think? whatever periodical has been serializing Daniel Clowes,Jamie Hernandez,and the other guys). The other is The Collected Doug Wright ,a collection of work by the celebrated Canadian cartoonist. For many more pictures of this book visit this entry on their blog. I mean,look at these pages. I don’t know Doug Wright from Adam,but this is a beautifully designed book. Once upon a time I would have pre-ordered that without even thinking twice. But the new me just made a note of it on an Amazon.com wish list and will think about it when it comes out. I do love the size,though. Looking through the rest of the blog (at http://www.drawnandquarterly.com/blog/) D&Q seem to be using it a lot. Why does the pusherman have to have such sweet,sweet smack? | PN6725-PN6778?According to the Library of Congress Classification (LCC) system Graphic novels and comic strips are classified in the PN6725-PN6778 range,arranged by the region or country of their creation (not publication) then double-cuttered by main entry (usually author,then title). For more information on "Cataloging Graphic Novels" checkout this presentation by Georgia Perimeter College. |
