Abstract:
At the PCC Operations Committee meeting on May 6, 2022, librarians from multiple institutions questioned the lack of “Manga” as an accepted term in the LCGFT vocabulary, and expressed a desire to have manga added to the LCGFT. The GNCRT Metadata and Cataloging Committee contacted the Policy, Training and Cooperative Programs Division at the Library of Congress, and offered to research and report on “Manga” from the perspective of comics librarians and the comics community more broadly.
Description:
The GNCRT Metadata and Cataloging Committee recommends that the Library of Congress adopt “Manga” as a term into the LCGFT vocabulary (and preferably also into the LCSH vocabulary, for scholarly works about the form). Manga as a form meets the criteria for inclusion into the LCGFT delineated in LCGFT Manual Instruction J 120–it is definable and identifiable, with a common, shared American understanding, as seen above. An LCGFT heading for manga would bring the vocabulary into line with other authority vocabularies that already include the term. And it would alleviate the problems for patrons and libraries that the lack of LCGFT term, and patchwork of stopgap terms, creates when attempting to access manga in library catalogs. The Committee would be happy to further facilitate the process by creating SACO proposals for “Manga” as a genre and subject, should the Library of Congress agree that manga would now be eligible for inclusion into the LCGFT and LCSH.
