The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum, part of the Ohio State University Libraries in Columbus, Ohio, holds the world's largest and most comprehensive academic research collection of original and printed comic art.
The library documents and displays comic strips, editorial cartoons and cartoon art across many forms, including comic books, daily and Sunday strips, graphic novels, magazine cartoons and sports cartoons. Its holdings include some 450,000 original cartoons, 36,000 books, 51,000 serial titles and 3,000 feet of manuscript materials, plus roughly 2.5 million comic strip clippings and tear sheets.
The institution began in 1977, when the Milton Caniff Collection was donated to Ohio State and delivered to its School of Journalism. Lucy Shelton Caswell, who headed the effort, became the first curator and remained in the role until 2010. The original material was first housed in two converted classrooms, one a reading room and one for storage.
The collection grew quickly through major gifts. In 1992, United Media donated the Robert Roy Metz Collection of 83,034 original cartoons by 113 cartoonists, and the mid-1990s brought syndicate proof books and original art from cartoonists such as Lynn Johnston and P. Craig Russell.
A landmark acquisition came in 1998, when the San Francisco Academy of Comic Art Collection was acquired from its director, Bill Blackbeard, giving the library the world's largest collection of newspaper comic strip tear sheets and clippings. Six semitrailer trucks were needed to move the material from California to Ohio.
In June 2008, the collection of the International Museum of Cartoon Art, founded in 1973 by cartoonist Mort Walker, was transferred to the library. It included more than 200,000 original works with an estimated value of 20 million dollars, spanning comic strips, comic books, animation, editorial and advertising art.
In September 2009, the Ohio State Board of Trustees approved the current name in recognition of a 7 million dollar gift toward renovating Sullivant Hall. The museum honors William Addison Ireland, who lived from 1880 to 1935, a self-taught cartoonist from Chillicothe, Ohio, who drew the Sunday feature The Passing Show for The Columbus Dispatch.
Among its named holdings are the Will Eisner Collection, the Bill Watterson Collection, the Walt Kelly Collection and the Jay Kennedy Collection of more than 9,500 underground comic books. The 20.6 million dollar Sullivant Hall project was completed in 2013, expanding the library from about 6,808 square feet to more than 40,000, with a reading room, three galleries and climate-controlled storage.
Reported by Wikipedia (Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum).
