In an interview with the comics website Newsarama, Jeff Smith notes the instrumental role librarians have played in advocating for comics. Smith describes a 2002 visit to the ALA with Colleen Doran, Neil Gaiman, and Art Spiegelman:
And we’re all excited about how this is our chance to make a case for comics…. But immediately, it was clear that the librarians were way out in front of us. They knew this. They told me that circulation in libraries was down everywhere. You know, internet, video games… standard fears that everybody has that we’re losing you minds. But there was one exception. The circulation had gone up 300 percent across the country… in graphic novels. So the librarians didn’t need to be convinced. They were there going, “We want more. What do we do?” So that was a pleasant surprise.
Additionally, Smith notes that Bone was embraced by libraries in its original self-published edition, leading to its eventual publication by Scholastic.