Illustration of the library’s original location by Kevin Huizenga.
Facility Notes: the Schulz Library
Of all the spaces, rented, leased, inhabited, repurposed, and/or owned outright by the Center for Cartoon Studies, our athenaeum of comics and related ephemera has the most storied past.
Former Schulz librarian Caitlin McGurk (left, now Associate Curator at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at OSU) and members of the class of 2012 making use of the Main Street Museum space.
Originally set up in the former garage of the restored firehouse that is the Main Street Museum, the Schulz Library underwent a hasty relocation in the wake of Hurricane Irene.
September 1, 2011: the Main Street Museum building at left, overlooking water from the White River, which had not yet receded back to its former level.
Jon Chad (left), and Jen Vaughn (right, ‘10) getting mucky during flood clean-up.
The Museum, like many homes and businesses throughout Vermont, was hard hit. The room that held the CCS collection survived, but the flooding necessitated a rapid relocation of all of the printed matter in order to avoid water damage and its book-killing sidekick, mold. The call went out, and the CCS community went to work rescuing our beloved collection.
Alexis Cornell (’13), Melanie Gillman (’12), and Amelia Onorato (’12) packing cars full of comic books.
The interim stop for the books was an undisclosed storage space, where they would need to be reorganized, checked for damage, and protected from further harm while awaiting a new home.
For a little while, there were piles of books everywhere!
And what a new home that would turn out to be. After a long negotiation and the deployment of the full repertoire of Michelle Ollie’s superpowers, CCS acquired White River Junction’s historic Post Office building, and… well, that’s a story for another blog post. Suffice it to say that a good slice of the Post Office building was earmarked as library space, and while stacks of periodicals and graphic novels longed for attention in their temporary quarters, that slice got reshaped, refitted, and polished to perfection.
The digs in 2012, still being dug.
Once all the floor-to-ceiling shelving was in, the walls painted, and the trademark black-and-yellow sign mounted above the front door, the collection was once again loaded into hatchbacks and relocated by the CCS book brigade.
Unknown ally, dave w (’12), Melanie Gillman (’12), and Juan Fernandez (’14) filling brand-new bookshelves a year after Hurricane Irene blew through.
But this time, all those beautiful bande dessinée would be guaranteed safety from disasters natural and human-made—the Post Office is a fallout shelter, after all. We like to think the biggest threat faced by Linus, Beethoven, and our stalwart librarians is a student clinging overzealously to that giant edition of Kramer’s Ergot or a volume of Little Lulu past its due date.
The Schulz Library beckons, innocently. It will steal your afternoon from you.
Several shelves of student work allow efficiency analysts to measure the output of the CCS community by the linear foot.
Ludwig watches over all.
So. Many. Comic. Books.
Each year, in cooperation with the Slate Book Review, students and faculty choose two comics to receive the Cartoonist Studio Prize. The candidates are made available for reading in the library.
The Great Wall of Schulz Librarian Self-Portraits. Thank you, o caretakers of the cartooning arts!
