Decolonising Digital Childhoods: A pilot study towards enhanced participation and diversification in historical children's literature collections

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This project will pilot techniques for diversifying digital access to and content within archives of childhood through five main strands of activity. Firstly, we will address the problem of the colonised archive - whereby out of the millions of items held by major collections, those that accord with the canonical or dominant powers in society are selected for digital exhibition - by seeking to decolonise the hidden materials buried in the stacks, boxes, and basements of one of the largest collections of children's literature in the US, the Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature, and one of the largest in the UK, Homerton College, Cambridge. These collections are partially catalogued with incomplete MARC records that rely on decades-old hierarchies of 'significance'. Secondly, we will enhance metadata for these texts through direct research by the project team and also by asking users, including young adults, parents, teachers, and scholars, to supply anonymous commentary/reviews of children's books, so that more diverse perspectives can be accounted for. Thirdly, we will deploy full-text searches of identified trigger words that can be harmful to readers. Children's literature struggles with historical (and very often canonical) authors who have been offensive to historically enslaved, colonised, or denigrated people. The first item available in the Baldwin collection, "150 instructive stories", contains the word "negro" on page 101, for instance, calling the character "a simple and unlettered savage". It is a dereliction of our duty as gatekeepers to allow such casual racism to go unchecked. Similar problems are encountered continually with respect to the history of demeaning terms associated with disability and indigenous cultures, as well as the immigrants who have shaped modern America and Britain. Trigger warnings, with indications of harmful content for intersectional identities, will protect researchers, children, and general readers from offensiveness or hurt that can emerge in otherwise safe search queries or acts of browsing. Fourthly, we will curate a digital collection of 20 children's books designed explicitly to engage with decolonising historical children's literature. Some initial work towards such an edition has begun in the Baldwin Library's 2019 exhibition 'Racism, Representation, and Resistance in Children's Literature, 1800-2015'. We will build upon this exhibition to offer an expanded digital edition, jointly hosted by the Baldwin Library and Homerton College Library with materials from both collections, including scholarly introductions and video and textual commentary. Finally, we will through project training and wider activities encourage leadership and skills development towards diversifying digital archival practice.