Objective. The presence of the graphic novel in Spain’s university libraries deserves to be studied in greater detail. This article reports on catalogue searches used to examine how this kind of book is entering the holdings of these libraries.
Methodology. The catalogue of the Spanish university libraries network REBIUN was used to systematically search graphic novel book titles from the Unicómic series. A further search was made to find academic studies on the graphic novel in the libraries of those universities associated with the Spanish university association CRUE. Finally, qualitative research was also conducted to examine the relationship between the graphic novel and Spanish universities and academic libraries.
Results. The graphic novel is entering university library collections in a variety of ways and has gained increasing presence in certain parts of the world, including the US. In Spain, however, the presence of graphic novels in library collections is still limited, as is the offering of official university degree studies on this genre. Many of the university libraries sampled did not have even one of the books from the series chosen, Unicómic, and none of them offered the whole series. Furthermore, the libraries did not share any standard technical procedure for dealing with this kind of book in their collections.
