Our Library's huge Manga and Anime Convention for Teens

For our second year, we held Yomicon, our manga and anime convention for teens. We had almost 750 people, the vast majority of them teens, a few kiddos, and about 100 parents. It was about double from last year. I wasn't one of the people who planned Yomicon, that honor goes to some of my insanely talented colleagues, but I helped to work the event and I wanted to brag about it, because it was pretty much the most incredible library program I have ever been a part of. It took the committee almost a year to plan this, and I know they've already started thinking about next year.

We had a huge manga and anime library (sent over to the host branch from the other 20 libraries in our system) that was available for check out. And check out it did. The kids would check out entire series of graphic novels. It was so cool. I think we checked out over 1000 volumes in that one evening.


We had screenings, an artist panel, a cosplay contest, tons of food, Dance Dance Revolution, and other video games, an art contest, crafts (including button making and steampunk jewelry), a canned food drive, a live band, and a whole bunch more that I am forgetting. We basically took over an entire library branch for an entire evening.

Everyone who entered got YomiYen, our currency for the evening. With that they could buy themselves refreshments and prizes. If they participated in various events they could earn more YomiYen, which meant more food and bigger better prizes. We had so many prizes and it wasn't nearly enough. We're going to have to start making them earlier this year.

Here are some of the prizes that were made by our incredibly talented staff:



Some food:


And you can check out our Yomicon Blog for more information.