Research Guides: Children's Literature and Culture: Digitized Primary Sources

Library resources

Digitized juvenile materials via the online catalog
Access both items digitized in-house at Princeton and titles available from proprietary databases; includes both historical and contemporary publications.
Treasures of the Cotsen Collection at Princeton's Digital Repository
Browse or search for digital photographs of selected Cotsen materials in various formats and languages.
Online Exhibitions
Browse digital photographs of selected pages from materials previously exhibited in the gallery of the Cotsen Children's Library.
Chinese Shadow Figures
View over 2,200 digital photographs of Chinese shadow figures from the East Asian Library and the Gest Collection.

Databases of digitized books and periodicals (find more full-text databases by subject):

American Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Full-text and page images of several hundred American periodicals dated between 1740 and 1940.
Nineteenth-Century Fiction This link opens in a new window
Full-text of 250 British novels from 1782 to 1903.
Gale Primary Resources This link opens in a new window
Searches across Gale primary source collections (including Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Nineteenth Century Collections Online, Indigenous Peoples: North America, and Brazilian and Portuguese History and Culture). Also allows users to analyze content using frequency and term-relationship tools.
HathiTrust This link opens in a new window
A collection of millions of titles digitized from member libraries around the world.
From the Public Collections or My Collections tabs, login using your Princeton ID to see public PDFs.
CADAL This link opens in a new window
The China Academic Digital Associative Library 大学数字图书馆国际合作计划 is a collection of scanned Chinese books, both in and out of copyright, including ancient texts, Republican books and periodicals, as well as post-1949 publications.
Quan guo bao kan suo yin This link opens in a new window
The National Index to Chinese Newspapers & Periodicals 全国报刊索引 indexes articles published in Chinese periodicals from 1833 to current. Most pre-1949 articles are downloadable as full-image pdfs.
See EAL pages for instructions.

Online full-text or images

Institution	Collection	Contents	Chronological scope	Language	Size
Center for Research Libraries	Chinese Pamphlets 連環畫	mass education materials published in Hong Kong and in Mainland China, particularly Shanghai	1947-1954	Chinese	200
Children's Books Online	The Rosetta Project	illustrated books	pre-1920s	English and European, with translations into multiple languages	500
Free Library of Philadelphia	Children's literature archive	manuscripts, sketches and preliminary art, book dummies, color separations, and final artwork	historical and contemporary	English	1,700
Internet Archive	Children's Library	from the holdings of multiple libraries	18th century - 1920s (bulk)	English, European, and other languages	3,300
Library of Congress	Children's Book Selections	works by renowned illustrators	1770-1920	English	70
Project Gutenberg	Children's Bookshelf	classical children's literature	pre-1920s	English, European, and more
University of Florida	Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature	children's books	18th century - 1920s (bulk)	English, European	6,100
University of Maryland	International Children's Digital Library	children's books	16th century - contemporary	50+ different languages	4,600
University of Pittsburgh	19th Century Schoolbooks	school textbooks	19th century	English	130
Wayne State University	Eloise Ramsey Collection of Literature for Young People	children's books	18th century - 1920s	English, European	650

Digital Public Library of America
A one-stop discovery platform for millions of materials from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions across the United States.
University of Pennsylvania: the Online Books Page
Lists over 3 million books that are freely readable over the Internet.
Cultural Japan 日本文化
Discovers digital resources on Japanese culture published in museums and libraries from around the world. The platform has collected over a million items.
Ivy Plus Libraries' Digital Projects on East Asia
A platform for Ivy plus member libraries to share their published and ongoing digital projects. Links to a dozen university libraries' digital projects on East Asian materials.
Digital Resources and Projects on East Asia
Presents digital resources in a spreasheet, which is sortable and searchable by a variety of categories such as chronological and geographical coverage.

See also LibGuides > Online Reference Shelf > Online Texts

British Library: Discovering Children's Books
Displays selected pages or full content of over 150 children's stories, poems and illustrations ranging from medieval fables to contemporary picture books.
University of Hawaii at Manoa: Lian Huan Hua (连环画) Collection
Displays cover images of 150 Chinese picture-story books, mostly dating 1971-1976.
University of Washington: Historical Children's Literature Collection
Displays selected pages or full content of European and American children's books and ephemera from the 18th to the 20th century.
University of Washington: K-Manhwa, Korean Graphic Novel Cover Art
Displays over 1,000 cover images of K-Manhwa (Korean graphic novels), a format which has been part of Korean popular culture since the early 20th century.