Annotated Bibliography of Information Resources Relevant to Indexing Editorial Cartoons for Search and Retrieval

Abstract

This annotated bibliography takes as its starting point the well-documented literature gap in published research on indexing collections of editorial cartoons for search and retrieval. It attempts to identify a number of key information resources specifically relevant to this field of research. To provide context, the scope of the bibliography is then widened to take account of the broader field of editorial cartoon research, which encompasses studies in academic disciplines including rhetoric, semiotics, art history, political studies, media and communication studies, journalism, and library and information studies. In addition to these perspectives the bibliography identifies some selected recent studies that focus on the ways in which readers receive and respond to information communicated by editorial cartoons. 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. At the same time profound changes in media publication since the advent of the internet have impacted on editorial cartoonists and cartoon publishing, and this is reflected in the literature. The potential for large indexed cartoon collections to be data-mined for topic modelling for research in the social sciences has pointed to the need for indexers of cartoon collections to improve metadata standards and structures to allow improved access to cartoon metadata for computational analysis. While the literature gap in this field is widely acknowledged, this study concludes that there has been a small but significant increase in published research in this field since 2000.