Content area
Full Text
Introduction
They can be seen on Japanese television morning, noon, or night, as well as on the movie screen and in video stores. Their viewers are male and female, grade schooler and graduate student, housewife and businessman. The content can include raucous humor or theological speculation or horrifying pornography – or all three at once. Their visual quality can be as amateurish as South Park or on the cutting edge of computer-generated imagery.
(Drazen, 2003, p. 7).
Anime, a form of animated entertainment originating in Japan, continues to increase in global popularity. In 2015, the total market value of the anime industry was US$18.1 billion, an increase of approximately 12 percent from 2014 (Anime News Network, 2016). A report from The Association of Japanese Animations (2016) also shows that the anime industry has been growing for five consecutive years due to the expansion of licensing sales and streaming rights. In addition to growing revenue, anime also has an increasing number of live events and digital communities, forums, blogs and websites.
Once a “minor” cultural phenomenon in the USA, anime has become mainstream (Exner, 2012). As anime and manga (Japanese comic books) have become hugely popular, they are an increasingly important part of cultural heritage, particularly in recent years (Exner, 2012). With increased commercial success, academic researchers now examine anime and manga from scholarly and artistic perspectives (Fennell et al., 2013). Despite growth in popularity, demand, and calls to provide anime materials to users in the library and information science domain, there are few studies that examine and define the users of anime.
Understanding what users want is a crucial step for information providers and specialists, especially when the information is relatively new. The fulfillment of anime users’ needs can be improved in current information systems, especially in libraries. In Exner’s (2012) study, participants expressed dissatisfaction with libraries’ anime genre organization. Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) show discrepancies between what users need and existing subject terms (further discussed in Relevant Research below). In a similar vein, libraries now provide community anime events and programs, yet are often uncertain how the community might best be served (Brehm-Heeger et al., 2007; Kan and Fletcher-Spear, 2002; King and Keller, 2006; Kruse, 2013; Ries-Taggart, 2007). This reveals...