Cirrus@Austlit

In this paper we examine the politics of print and digital archives and their implications for research in the field of historical children's literature. We use the specific example of our comparative, collaborative project 'From Colonial to Modern: Transnational Girlhood in Australian, New Zealand and Canadian Print Cultures, 1840-1940' to contrast the strengths and limitations of print and digital archives of young people's texts from these three nations. In particular, we consider how the failure of some print archives to collect ephemeral or non-canonical colonial texts may be reproduced in current digitising projects. Similarly, we examine how gaps in the newly forged digital "canon" are especially large for colonial children's texts because of the commercial imperatives of many large-scale digitisation projects. While we acknowledge the revolutionary applications of digital repositories for research on historical children's literature, we also argue that these projects may unintentionally marginalise or erase certain kinds of children's texts from scholarly view in the future (Author abstract).

Advertising often occurs in 19th and 20th century children’s literature, however as a theme it has long been overlooked as an area of historical and analytical value. This article examines a range of booklets, books and encyclopedias which contain advertising material and can be found in the Children’s Literature Collection at the State Library of Victoria (Author abstract).

his article considers the importance of collections of children’s books in the university library, and why they can be of use to scholars. It then addresses the McLaren collection of children's books at the University of Melbourne, creating a small sampling of girls’ books from the collection to discuss the sort of books Australian girls would have been reading in the first half of the twentieth century, and the views and values that authors of this period wanted to pass on to girls. These books are used to address a broader discussion of the historical-cultural value of girls’ books in the collection (Author abstract)..

The John Mystery books are a collection of Australian children's books and ephemera produced by a little known publishing dynamo, Lester Sinclair, in the middle of the twentieth century. I identify factors which operated to position these items as forgotten elements of Australian literary history. After contextualizing the John Mystery brand of children's books, I suggest how children's literature scholars may find potential resources in the Children's Literature Collection and other heritage collections of the State Library of Victoria (Author abstract).

This essay considers a specific digital ‘archive’ of early Australian children’s literature, known as the Children’s Literature Digital Resources (CLDR), which is located in AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource. Our paper discusses how early Australian children’s literature included in the CLDR collection rhetorically constructs nation and place, and in so doing constructs an Australian identity for its implied readers.

Source: Author's abstract.

A recent Australian literature digitisation project uncovered some surprising discoveries in the children’s books that it digitised. The Children’s Literature Digital Resources (CLDR) Project digitised children’s books that were first published between 1851 to 1945 and made them available online through AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource. The digitisation process also preserved, within the pages of those books, a range of bookplates, book labels, inscriptions, and loose ephemera. This material allows us to trace the provenance of some of the digitised works, some of which came from the personal libraries of now-famous authors, and others from less celebrated sources. These extra-textual traces can contribute to cultural memory of the past by providing evidence of how books were collected and exchanged, and what kinds of books were presented as prizes in schools and Sunday schools. They also provide insight into Australian literary and artistic networks, particularly of the first few decades of the 20th century. This article describes the kinds of material uncovered in the digitisation process and suggests that the material provides insights into literary and cultural histories that might otherwise be forgotten. It also argues that the indexing of this material is vital if it is not to be lost to future researchers (Author abstract).

The ACT Branch of The Children’s Book Council of Australia established the Lu Rees Archives of Australian Children’s Literature in 1974. Since 1980, it has been housed and supported by the University of Canberra and all Branches of The Children’s Book Council of Australia. The Archive’s journey from idea to a nationally significant collection is traced. Individuals who have contributed to its development are identified. Major events, which have changed its trajectory, are discussed. This article demonstrates throughout how the Archives continuously reviews, renews and enhances its capacity to provide resources for the study and research of Australian children’s authors and illustrators, including both the literature and the historical and cultural context in which it was created (Author abstract).

From the late 1800s to the 1950s, the ‘School Reader’, a graded and illustrated anthology of stories, poems, essays and extracts from longer works, was an indispensable part of Australian classroom life. This paper considers the Readers’ literary and visual production of the child/nation (Author abstract).