#19 South Hill Branch

South Hill Branch
6076 Fraser Street

Let me update you all on my quest for X-Men comics to read (and the side story of missing/stolen comics at libraries). I stopped by the Central Branch of the VPL the other day to pick up a hold, and decided to see what X-Men comics were available. I checked the catalogue, and saw that there were 25 X-Men related comics supposedly available on the shelves at that branch right now! Hurray!

So I went to check the young adult/teen section and couldn't find any. I wasn't sure if I was just being stupid or what, so I went and asked a librarian. That librarian couldn't find any of the graphic novels they supposedly had in stock (and said they were confused as to how things in that section were organized), so they asked a YA librarian to come help me. They also couldn't find any on the shelves, so they went off to look elsewhere. They eventually came back with the one they had managed to find (which I'd already read), and sadly told me that the rest were probably stolen. There was also one in the reference section, which I didn't check, so that one might be there. But that's, at best, 8% of the X-Men comics were there, and 92% were missing. Crazy!

On a different day I stopped by the brightly painted South Hill Branch to check out what they had. They actually had X-Men comics available to read! (I think they had only three, but I also don't think any were actually missing according to the catalogue.) So I read the final volume of Kieron Gillen's recent Uncanny X-Men (it was pretty good!), but I was disappointed by the seating options available as I was looking for a place to hang out for a few hours and read as the weather outside was kind of gross. Instead I went to a different library and finished reading a terrible/ridiculous 1930s travel guide to Chicago, and some other stuff. Yay reading! Yay libraries!

Only four libraries left! This blog is almost done!

Statistics

So after the last post I was looking around the VPL collection for other X-Men comics. I quickly discovered a noticeable trend, and so decided to go through every volume that shows up on the site when you search for X-Men and limit the results to comic books.

There are 145 results. Now many of these aren't X-Men comics, but I'm willing to give the system the benefit of the doubt and assume that at least one of the X-Men show up in the comic somewhere.

Of those 145, six of them are not actually comics. Remember this is _after_ I've already limited my results to only give me comics.

Of the remaining 139 comics that show up, 55 are missing/trace. That's 39.6%!  And remember, those are just the ones that are tagged missing/trace on _every_ copy. Many more have only a sole copy left.

Of the remaining 84, 32 are currently in processing, checked out, being held, or in transit (which I've learnt can mean that the book is actually missing, and has been for several years, why can their system not alert someone if a book has been in transit for that long?). Leaving 52 "at any location" (including two that are only available in the reference collection), or 50 that you could theoretically walk into a library and borrow today.

How many of those do you think are actually there?

I was always aware that theft was an issue in regards to libraries, but I guess I didn't realize both the extent to which it is an issue, and the fact that stolen books aren't always replaced quickly/ever. I know that Marvel is pretty terrible at keeping books in print, but I also know that many of these books (or different editions of the same material) are available.

So I guess I've got an new question in regards to libraries that I'll have to consider: How do you deal with library theft?