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Friday, 8 June 2007

Is Google Planning a Digital Comic Archive?

US comics news site Newsarama reports on an interesting development in Google’s ongoing mission to digitize some 10 million books stored in US university libraries.

One of the treasure troves being considered for the digital world is Michigan State’s Russel B. Nye Popular Culture Collection, which has a 200,000 piece comic art collection with an emphasis “on graphic storytelling in the newspaper comics or newsstand comic book tradition to present a complete picture of what American comics’ readership has seen, especially since the middle of the 20th century.”

According to Newsarama, materials in the public domain will be available through Google, including The Yellow Kid strips from the late 1890s and Famous Funnies No. 1, published in the 1930s and considered by popular culture historians as the first true American comic book. Material still under copyright won’t be freely available.

All very interesting, especially given the amount of digital comics now online.

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