Research Guides: Children's Literature and Culture: External Resources

Children’s literature collections

Special Collections in Children's Literature: An International Directory by Dolores Blythe Jones.
Publication Date: 1995. Third edition.

This directory contains the addresses of US institutions with children’s literature holdings in various formats; indexed by subject. A directory of international collections describing the holdings of 119 institutions in 40 countries is also included.

A digitized copy is available via the Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature in Special Collections, University of Florida.

American Antiquarian Society: the Children's Literature collection
Numbering over 26,000 volumes, the collection chronicles the emergence of an American literature for children.
Bank Street College: Center for Children’s Literature
Part of the Bank Street College Library, the Center is home to a collection of more than 44,500 children’s books. It oversees the Irma Black Award, the Cook Prize, and the Best Spanish Language Picture Book Award.
Berlin State Library, Germany
The East Asia Department of the Berlin State Library houses a collection of about 2000 Chinese comic books (lianhuanhua) from the late 1970s through early 1980s. Bibliographical records that have been completed are searchable by the keyword "lian huan hua" at the online catalogue of Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.
International Youth Library (Internationale Jugendbibliothek)
The world's largest library for international children's and youth literature; based in Munich, Germany.
Kent State University: the Reinberger Children's Library Center
Houses more than 40,000 children’s books, including more than 25,000 picture books, posters, original artwork, and character toys of the Marantz Picturebook Collection for the Study of Picturebook Art.
Library of Congress: Children's Literature Center
The Library holds between 500,000 and 600,000 children's books and periodicals, as well as maps, visual and audio media and secondary sources.
National Diet Library: the International Library of Children’s Literature 国際子ども図書館
Japan's national library of children’s books, with a holding of over 300,000 volumes of Japanese books and 114,000 foreign books.
Stanford University: Special collections of children's books
Contains a collection of children's literature published since the late 18th century and a collection of primers and readers published from the end of the 18th century through the early decades of the 20th century.
University of Florida: The Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature
Contains more than 115,000 volumes published in the United States and Great Britain from the mid-1600s to present day.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: the School Collection
Consists of over 178,000 cataloged volumes of children’s and young adult literature.
University of Maryland: children's books in the Gordon W. Prange Collection プランゲ文庫
The Gordon W. Prange Collection represents the most comprehensive archive in the world of Japanese print publications issued during the early years of the Occupation of Japan, 1945-1949. Its children's collection consists of 8,000 titles that include Japanese picture books, comic books, story books and children's games and coloring books.
University of Michigan: Children's Literature Special Collection
Contains more than 30,000 volumes with strengths in pop-up and movable books, Newbery and Caldecott medal winners, works by Michigan authors and illustrators, in addition to other archival artwork, correspondence, and manuscripts of authors and illustrators.
University of Minnesota: Children's Literature Research Collections
Holds books, manuscripts, illustrations, comic books, story papers, and other materials related to the creation of historical and modern children's literature, including archival materials and original artwork for 1,700 authors and illustrators.
University of Southern Mississippi: the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection
Houses original manuscripts and illustrations produced by more than 1,300 children's authors and illustrators, as well as a book collection of more than 180,000 volumes of historical and contemporary children's literature dating from 1530 to the present.
Universität Heidelberg, Germany
The Seifert Collection of Heidelberg University houses a collection of about 2000 titles of Chinese comic books (lianhuanhua), mostly from the 1970s through the 1980s.

Resource guides by other institutions

Communities

children-literature-uk@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
A listserv for academic discussion of all aspects of children's literature.
H-Childhood
A listserv on the history of childhood and youth.
The Society for the History of Children and Youth