Japanese Cartoons, Virtual Child Pornography, Academic Libraries, and the Law - PREPUBLICATION VERSION

Many academic libraries are adding comics and cartoon in print form to their collections. Japanese comics, called “manga,” are a large part of this collecting. However, there are drawn images of people seemingly under eighteen years of age engaged in highly graphic, uncensored, sex acts. The purpose of this paper is to discuss whether collecting such materials violates any anti-obscenity laws of the United States and endangers the collection developer and the library to criminal liabilities. This article was published in REFERENCE & USER SERVICES QUARTERLY (2015), 54:4, 54-60. [American Library Association]