Instructor brings comic relief to UNC

Eight years ago, Ruffin Priest was a librarian in training who couldn’t find the books she needed.

The graduate student in the School of Information and Library Science was researching graphic novels — the lengthier, more in-depth cousins of comic books — for her thesis, but many of the titles she sought weren’t at UNC.

When Priest had trouble finding the books at the University, she had to venture to Rosemary Street, the former home of Second Foundation Bookstore.

There, the manager would allow her to browse the shelves, previewing books to her heart’s content.

“Gracious was an understatement,” she said.

Ultimately, she was limited by what she could afford.

Rebecca Vargha, an instructor in the school who came to UNC two years prior, saw something wrong in Priest’s plight. Since then, she has built a collection of graphic novels in the school’s library in Manning Hall.

As of this year, the collection numbers about 800 works and has been growing at 100 works per year in each of the past eight years.

Vargha said she has an appreciation for the medium and the way it helps her thoroughly understand a book’s characters.

Among her favorite works in the collection are the collected strips of classic series like “Tintin” and “Prince Valiant.”

“I’m a big believer in ‘a picture is worth a thousand words,’” she said.

Priest has long since left UNC, and now works as the director of libraries at the Moses Brown School, a small private school in Providence, R.I.

Although the graphic novel has become a more respected literary form in the time since she left the University, Priest still wishes she had access to the books during her time at the school.

“It would’ve been convenient and validating to the research I was doing,” she said.

Matthew Wood, a graduate student at the school, has gotten to experience the collection firsthand. He simply stumbled upon it one day while working in the school’s library.

“I looked over to my left and saw these bookshelves full of graphic novels,” he said.

He wrote his first masters thesis on the form of composite art that features combinations of words and pictures. He found the collection useful for his research but returns on occasion to browse it at his leisure.

“It’s something that I keep coming back to,” he said.

Wood said he finds UNC’s stash of graphic novels impressive because it has many of the medium’s must-have works, from Alan Moore’s “Watchmen” to Art Spiegelman’s “Maus.”

He recommends it to his friends when they want to find out if graphic novels are for them, although he sometimes has trouble finding works himself.

“The Walking Dead,” a graphic novel series that is the inspiration for the AMC television show of the same name, is perpetually checked-out when he looks for it on shelves. The ninth book in the series was checked out 14 times alone between March and November 2010.

Vargha says the collection is not just popular among students. When children with Carolina Kids Camp visit the library during the summer months, she says the campers are particularly drawn to it.

“They love the graphic novels,” she said. “That’s their favorite part of the library. That and the egg chairs.”

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