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The difficulty of attributing subject to editorial cartoons for indexing purposes exists both for traditional paper-based cartoon formats and for digitized or born-digital cartoons. This paper presents a selective review of literature on indexing editorial cartoons and the associated challenges.

A gap exists in published research on indexing collections of editorial cartoons for online search and retrieval. This paper presents a review of selected works that specifically address the topic of editorial cartoon indexing within a wider context of research that addresses image indexing, subject analysis and indexing challenges more generally. Works that address the interpretation of cartoons by readers and how readers respond to information communicated by editorial cartoons are also considered.

Cartoon controversies in transnational and multicultural contexts, experienced through the international news media since 2000, have dramatically increased research attention and publications in this area. Profound changes in media publication since the advent of the Internet have had an impact on editorial cartoonists and cartoon publishing. Subject indexing of editorial cartoons remains a challenge.

The potential for large indexed cartoon collections to be data-mined for topic modeling for research in the social sciences points to the need for indexers of cartoon collections to improve metadata standards and structures to allow improved access to cartoon metadata for computational analysis.

This paper places discussion of the technical challenges facing indexers of editorial cartoons within a broader context of discussions about the nature and future of editorial cartooning in rapidly changing media and publishing environments.

Journalism is concerned with the reporting, writing, editing, broadcasting and the photography of news. Editorial or print journalism is limited to writing, editing and reporting and it is one factor in the ever‐growing list of diverse opportunities open to the modern day journalist. Photojournalism, radio and television broadcasting, editorial and newspaper cartoons, public relations and telecommunications are other aspects. All of these are part of “mass media” or “mass communication,” phrases that will be repeated throughout this article. Other areas considered part of the mass media are cinema, advertising, book publishing and sometimes photography.

Cartoons have these last years represented an excellent way to lead debates on various socio-political and economic issues affecting Nigeria and to engage and enlighten Nigerian audiences. Almost all Nigerian newspapers and magazines have found them instrumental in their criticism of political malpractices and socio-cultural maladies plaguing the country. In line with this, many social forces (particularly NGOs) have embraced cartooning as a strong tool for environmental activism. Such social entities have in various platforms, deployed cartoons as a fruitful sensitization machinery to mobilize various segments of the Nigerian populace in favor of environmental protection. These sensitization efforts have most often entailed the construction/composition of emotionally and ideologically loaded cartoons that reflect many local myths and which are founded on local idiosyncrasies and worldviews. Understanding some Nigerian environmental cartoons has thus often been a complex task which in many instances, necessitates not only a full grasp of the principles of visual rhetoric but equally sufficient knowledge of some local myths and socio-cultural realities. In view of this fact, it may be interesting to apply semiotics in the reading of environmental cartoons. This chapter addresses this issue. It is divided into three main parts. The first part explores the state of environmental protection in Nigeria. The second part examines cartoons as a tool for social and political activism. The third part provides theoretical illuminations on the use of semiotics in the interpretation of cartoons and the last part provides a semiotic analysis of selected environmental cartoons.

Identifies and describes the essential factors to be considered when embarking on a manual newspaper or magazine indexing project in Africa. Broadly groups factors as being technical and non‐technical. Technical factors include subject coverage, geographical coverage, number of newspapers and magazines to be indexed, completeness or selectivity of indexing, index language, indexing method, resources, physical format and the human element. Non‐technical factors are managerial/administrative support and publicity. Describes the procedure for newspaper and magazine indexing in Africa. Urges librarians and the print media to embark on newspaper and magazine indexing to ensure accessibility of their contents.

The nations of the world are linked together by increasingly fast, efficient and sophisticated means of communication. Satellites, cable, and other telecommunication methods are used to implement this mass communication. The mass media forms, radio, television, newspapers, magazines, film, etc., have influenced not only their resident population, they have the potential to influence all of us. The reference sources in this article are concerned with this global aspect.

Despite the title of this bibliography, there was not a truly underground press in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. The phrase is amisnomer, reputedly coined on the spur of the moment in 1966 by Thomas Forcade when asked to describe the newly established news service, Underground Press Syndicate, of which he was an active member. The papers mentioned in this bibliography, except for the publications of the Weather Underground, were not published by secretive, covert organizations. Freedom of the press and of expression is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution, although often only symbolically as the experience of the undergrounds will show, and most of the publications that fall into the “underground” described herein maintained public offices, contracted with commercial printers, and often used the U.S. Postal Service to distribute their publications.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

THE Reference Department of Paisley Central Library today occupies the room which was the original Public Library built in 1870 and opened to the public in April 1871. Since that date two extensions to the building have taken place. The first, in 1882, provided a separate room for both Reference and Lending libraries; the second, opened in 1938, provided a new Children's Department. Together with the original cost of the building, these extensions were entirely financed by Sir Peter Coats, James Coats of Auchendrane and Daniel Coats respectively. The people of Paisley indeed owe much to this one family, whose generosity was great. They not only provided the capital required but continued to donate many useful and often extremely valuable works of reference over the many years that followed. In 1975 Paisley Library was incorporated in the new Renfrew District library service.

IT is now just forty‐eight years since, on the first page of The Library World, James Duff Brown wrote: “for quite a number of years Librarians and Library Authorities have been urging the establishment of a magazine which will reflect accurately and systematically the various phases of modern library work and progress. A demand has also arisen for a magazine of a more independent nature than anything hitherto issued, or, at least, one which is not hampered in any way by official connexion with a Society or other public body.” As then, we open the first page of the Forty‐Ninth Volume we are glad to assert that through the two generations of our existence the policy, enunciated in our first Editorial has been sustained. It cannot be greatly improved upon for our future, although library policy may and will change rapidly if all present prognostications have any substance in them. We intend, so far as we can, to promote progress, to endeavour to allow expression to younger writers, to support all the good efforts of the Library Association and any other body which energizes libraries, but never to be subservient to them or fear to ask questions.