Our family recently spent an afternoon at the Browne Popular Culture Library on the campus of Bowling Green State University in Ohio. I could spend hours looking through their holdings.
The entire fourth floor of the university library is dedicated to pop culture studies. They have an astounding collection of movies, recordings, and periodicals. But best of all, they have over 50,000 comic books. It's one of the largest library collections of comics in the world, although exceeded by the comic collections of the Library of Congress (over 100,000 comics) and the Comic Art Collection at the Michigan State University library (over 240,000 comics).
Even Golden Age comics are available. You can actually touch them and read them. Now some of the older, more valuable stuff has to be read on microfiche on the first floor reader. But duplicate issues are also available in hard copy.
So we took the elevator to the fourth floor where we turned right down a hallway that took us to a room with tables, a computer, and a help desk. Shelves held a number of reference works on the history of film, comics, TV, actors, fictional characters, and popular music among other topics. The reference books cannot be taken from this room.
Here is what was different from what I had envisioned: There were no stacks to browse in hopes of serendipitously running onto something that strikes your fancy. All items must be requested at the help desk, so it's good to know what you're looking for before you get there.
People unaffiliated with the university as either staff or students are at a bit of a disadvantage. First, you have to pay $25 if you want a library card. Parking can be a pain since so many lots are reserved. You cannot use a laptop to browse the card catalog since only school affiliates have passwords to access the wi-fi. While the website boasts large collections of Spiderman and Star Trek memorabilia, none of it is on display.
But the librarians will bring out whatever you want to see. I found the staff to be most helpful, friendly, and accommodating. They gave my kids some discarded hard cover comics and I came away with a reference book from the discard table. The librarians can log you into a library computer for use of the card catalog. So in spite of some inconveniences, I intend to make use of access to a library of this caliber which is within driving distance from where we live.
(Photo courtesy Flickr)