Long Term Availability of Primary Research Materials in Popular Romance Studies

Presented at Northeast Popular Culture Association 2024 Hybrid Conference  

This study is a response to Allan’s 2023 article in the Journal of Popular Romance Studies where he asked “about the future of scholarship, what happens if those primary texts we study are inaccessible to a future researcher? How should the field of popular romance studies begin the process of archiving the primary materials that are studied and talked about?” 

Publishers have historically published print catalog romance titles for short runs, releasing new titles frequently. While these titles are not available on the market for very long, the print format lends stability to them being availability in public and private libraries once they are collected. Popular Romance genre was one of the first to embrace the ebooks publishing format in the last 20 years, but there are no physical items to collect for electronic-only published titles. Onset of self publishing platforms like Kindle Direct Publishing have only accelerated the release of new titles. These e-only titles are often distributed outside of traditional library acquisitions methods and license only access models adds additional complexity. Academic libraries have yet to address these issues so we can build stable long term e-only fiction collections. In this study, I present the availability of primary source materials cited in 40 years of published popular romance studies for Canadian academic researchers via libraries and vendors. Using this study as a proxy to the state of romance collecting of our past, I will explore how we can address any gaps today and plan for the future.