Unlike Canada and France where federal resources have been allocated to create national cartoon repositories, in the United States this art form has been collected and preserved without coordination, and, until recently, in a very limited manner since all of the institutions listed above were founded within the past thirty-five years. Although working relationships between the six have been cordial, they have been limited to casual information sharing and occasional exhibition loans. The only formal institutional link is between Michigan State University and Ohio State University, both of which are members of the Consortium of Popular Culture Libraries in the Midwest. Correspondence concerning the formation of some type of institutional relationship between these institutions began in the fall of 1996. CAC was established with the clear understanding that cooperation among institutions with similar collection development goals has not historically been the norm.
Members are committed to dialogue and cooperation to foster mutual understanding and respect.
The fact that the participants in CAC are geographically dispersed is both an advantage and a disadvantage. The positive aspect of their diverse locations is that their resources are available to many people. The difficulty of working together over long distances is distinctly negative. To overcome this, CAC members agreed to create an information network based on positive staff relationships to achieve the mission of this group.