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About the Collection
Literature for Children is comprised of volumes from the Departments of Special Collections at several of the State University System of Florida libraries. It is a growing collection of digitized titles published, predominantly in the United States and Great Britain, from the 17th through the 20th centuries. The collection is of international significance for researchers who study historical, cultural, social and literary aspects of children's literature. More than half of the volumes collected here are unique among collections of children's literature elsewhere, whether in paper, microform, or digital format. The foundation for this Collection was a cataloging and preservation microfilming project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The NEH project included a digital color management strategy for the reproduction of illustrations as children saw them.
Florida State University
The John MacKay Shaw Collection, housed at the Florida State University Libraries in the division of Special Collections & Archives, includes over 22,400 books in the Childhood in Poetry Collection and over 46 linear feet of other materials that document the personal, business, and collecting activities of John MacKay Shaw, an internationally-known book collector. The Childhood in Poetry Collection is one of the foremost repositories of the poetry of childhood. It includes the books by, for, and about children, and additional materials he collected relating to the themes (bibliography, biography, children, collecting, publication, and writing) of the collection. The books included here come from the Childhood in Poetry Collection and from the Goldstein Library collection.
University of Florida
The Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature in the Department of Special Collections at the University of Florida's George A. Smathers Libraries contains more than 93,000 volumes published in Great Britain and the United States from the early 1700s through the 1990s. Its holdings of more than 800 early American imprints is the second largest such collection in the United States. The product of Ruth Baldwin's 40-year collection development efforts, this vast assemblage of literature printed primarily for children offers an equally vast territory of topics for the researcher to explore: education and upbringing, family and gender roles, civic values, racial, religious, and moral attitudes, literary style and format, and the arts of illustration and book design.
A great strength of the collection is the many English and American editions of the same work. Other strengths of the collection include 300 editions of Robinson Crusoe, 100 editions of Pilgrim's Progress, fables, juvenile biography, 19th century science and natural history, 19th century alphabet books, moral tales, fairy tales, 19th century juvenile periodicals, 19th century boys' adventure stories, 20th century boys' and girls' series, Little Golden Books, and juvenile publications of the American Sunday School Union and other tract societies.
The Baldwin Library is a key resource of the Center for the Study of Children's Literature and Media. The Center is an interdisciplinary center based in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida. Members of the Center include faculty and researchers from the university community; teachers, librarians, media specialists, and others working directly with children; and artists and writers creating works for children in print and other media. Its purpose is to encourage the exploration of this vital area of our cultural life through scholarly and critical investigations; through meetings, symposia, and seminars; and through the development of innovative ways to make the research and concerns of our members available to the general public.
University of South Florida
The University of South Florida maintains multiple collections of literature for children: historic and contemporary, for use in education and library science research as well as historical and social studies research. Collections of historical literature for children are held by the Department of Special Collections in the main library on the Tampa campus. Collections include boys, girls and animals series collections, chap books, early American textbooks, and pop-up book collections among others.
Collections of contemporary literature for children are held in the Juvenile Collection by the Nelson Poynter Memorial Library on the St. Petersburg campus. The Juvenile Collection exists to support the courses offered by the College of Education and to encourage adults to evaluate for themselves the appropriateness of Juvenile Collection materials for their individual children.
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Technical Aspects
Literature for Children seeks to make accessible volumes or children's literature, published in the United States and Great Britain between 1850 and 1923. Titles published during this period are now in the public domain and can be reproduced and access freely by anyone. This effort is enabled through funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, with initial grant projects awarded to the University of Florida. Literature for Children draws from the children's literature collections of the state's public university libraries and from the collections of their partners in K-12 and higher education. These volumes form part of the Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature, housed in the Department of Special Collections at the University of Florida. But, the currently available on-line collection includes volumes drawn from the Special Collections of Florida State University, Florida Atlantic University, and the University of South Florida. Together these institutions' holdings are impressive. The Baldwin Library, alone, holds more than 86,000 titles. Literature for Children includes titles both with and without color. Effort is currently concentrated on digitization of titles with color, since color is not well preserved by traditional reproduction-for-access methods such as microfilm. Literature for Children makes titles freely available via the Internet. Readers may acquire copies on CD-ROM, in PDF format, for a fee – PDF versions can also be downloaded freely from the Internet and saved to CD by readers with their own burner. Additionally, the majority of titles are contributed to and made available through theInternational Digital Children's Library and through the Internet Archive where patron's of the Archive's bookmobile may reproduce facsimile reprints.
Image Capture And Conversion
Participating libraries are responsible for digitization of selected materials from their own collections. Each library may perform its own digitization, or contract with a vendor or with another SUS library for digitization services. Image capture must adhere to the standards promulgated by the Cornell Department of Preservation and Conservation (see Digital Imaging for Library and Archives, Kenny and Chapman, 1996). A Quality Index of 5 or better for visual images is required.
Three types of images are created for all textual materials in the collection: TIFF, JPEG and PDF. A TIFF and JPEG image is created for every page; related sets of pages (e.g. chapters or articles) are bundled into PDF files. In the first year of the project, participating libraries created TIFF images and submitted them to FCLA, which subsequently created PDF and JPEG derivatives.
TIFF images are created as the direct result of scanning source materials (that is, as the native file format), using a variety of scanning hardware, primarily flat-bed scanners. TIFFs are archived as uncompressed electronic masters. Bit-depth is appropriate to the source and its anticipated use, and may be bitonal, 8-bit grey, 24-bit color, or greater. Color images are created and maintained in the sRGB color-space. Both grey and color images are calibrated and scanned to within the tolerances promulgated by the Library of Congress for the American Memory project. Images created from microfilmed sources reflect the quality of the source microfilm.
TIFF images are used to create JPEG derivatives using Adobe ImageReady Version 2.0 in a batch executable process. The TIFF image is resized setting the width to 600 pixels and the height accordingly. The process then progressively optimizes the image creating an image that displays progressively in a Web browser. The image will display as a series of overlays, enabling viewers to see a low-resolution version of the image before it downloads completely.
Creation of PDF files is a function performed by the locally written Florida Heritage loader software. The loader calls LeadTools custom ActiveX control to open sets of JPEG images, and then uses Thomas Mertz's PDFLib software to build the PDF.
Text-based versions, whether encapsulated with PDF, HTML or other mark-up, are produced either by re-keying from source documents or by optical character recognition (OCR) of TIFF images. A minimal accuracy rate of 99.995% is required.
Resource Description --Cataloging
Participating libraries are responsible for creating full MARC catalog records for selected materials from their own collections. Cataloging records are maintained in a union database of all Literature for Children materials at FCLA and are also contributed to the OCLC WorldCat.
Cataloging is expected to adhere to guidelines developed by the Technical Services Planning Committee Cataloging and Access Guidelines for Electronic Resources (CAGER). The guidelines specify that records should represent the electronic versions only, and include specific instructions to:
- Put the date of the original in Fixed Field Date1, the date of digitization in Date2, and use Form of Reproduction "s";
- Include a title (245) subfield h to indicate the resource is electronic;
- Specify the digitizing institution and date of digitization in the imprint (260);
- Include a series statement (830) for the Florida Heritage Project, justified by a general note (500);
- Use an original version note (534) to record the location of and publication information for the source document.
Complete MARC cataloging instructions can be found in the CAGER Guidelines.
Resource Description -- Structural Metadata
A file of structural metadata is created for every document to indicate the relationship between the physical units of digitization (TIFF, JPEG and other images) and the logical units of publication (pages, chapters, and other parts). The metadata format used is a modified version of the Elsevier EFFECT format called DataSet.TOC.
For each electronic resource (book volume, journal issue, manuscript, etc.), the DataSet.Toc file:
- Identifies and names the image files comprising the resource,
- Defines the order of images,
- Identifies and names the subsections (such as chapters),
- Says which images belong to particular subsections, and establishes the order and hierarchy of subsections.
Image Loading, Storage And Navigation
For each volume that is digitized, a directory containing one DataSet.TOC file and a set of images is sent by FTP from the contributing institution to FCLA. The metadata and images are processed by a locally written loader, which first checks that all the image files referenced by the DataSet.TOC are present, copies the images into a Literature for Children directory, and loads the structural metadata into DB2 tables maintained on a Unix server. If instructed, the loader will also create derivative formats such as PDF files.
Once structural metadata is loaded and images are moved to the appropriate directories, access and navigation is provided by another locally written DB2 server program.
Persistent URLs referencing the server application are created by program and inserted into the bibliographic record describing the resource.
Retrieval
The cataloging records describing Literature for Children resources are loaded into a shared central library management system, a locally developed application based on NOTIS, on an IBM mainframe. The records can be searched through the SUS Libraries' online catalog application. Once records are retrieved, the URLs in the bibliographic record are used as hotlinks to the DB2 server application, which initially presents a Table of Contents display.
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Copyright Information
Literature for Children is a collection of digital images made from books, pamphlets and other non-digital source materials.
- Some source materials are under copyright and have been digitized with the permission of the copyright holder. When this is the case, this information is given in a note that displays after the label "Terms of use" in the bibliographic record for the item and also at the top of the Table of Contents display for the item. Your use of these digital images is allowed by law only insofar as it remains within the terms and conditions described.
- In some cases, only a copyright statement will display, with no other restrictions listed. For example, "© Copyright [year], University of South Florida". In this case, the copyrighted page or image may be used for research, instruction and private study under Fair Use as described below.
- If not otherwise noted, the source materials are in the public domain. Use of these digital images created from public domain materials is unrestricted.
FAIR USE
Unless additional restrictions are noted, copyrighted electronic materials in this collection may be used for research, instruction, and private study under the provisions of Fair Use. Fair Use is a provision of United States Copyright Law (United States Code, Title 17, section 107) which allows limited use of copyrighted materials under certain conditions. Factors to be considered with regard to a particular use's falling under Fair Use include: the purpose or character of the use; The nature of the copyrighted work; The amount and substantiality of the work being used; The effect of the use on the market for and value of the original. Under Fair Use you may view, print, photocopy, and download images from this site without prior permission, provided that you provide proper attribution of the source on all copies. For any other use of these electronic materials, including but not limited to display, publication and commercial use, permission of the copyright holder must be obtained.
There are several good sources of information about copyright and Fair Use on the web. For additional information, you may want to start with the Smathers Library Copyright Reference Page at http://digital.uflib.ufl.edu/procedures/copyright/, or the Copyright Management Center, Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis at http://www.ulib.iupui.edu/special/collections/uarchives/ua089.
ATTRIBUTION OF SOURCE
Citations, quotations, and use of images in this collection made under Fair Use or with permissionof the copyright holder must acknowledge their source. Proper attribution includes the name of the resource, the name of the copyright holder, and the name of the project "Literature for Children".
PERMISSION FOR USE
Users assume all liability for copyright infringement and are advised to contact the institution holding the source materials for copyright information and permission to use the electronic versions. Permission must be obtained for display, publication, commercial use, or any other use of the digital materials in this collection except as allowed under Fair Use.
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Color Management
Color In Literature For Children
Images from: Little Sarah. (Boston : W. J. Reynolds & Co., [1851?]) |
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One of the ways to gauge the place of color in children's literature is to consider not only its denotative value but also, and perhaps more importantly, its connotative influence on readers. John Cech, author of studies on children's literature, in support of this project, has noted:
"aesthetically, color illustration offered the artist a new, wider vocabulary for representation, thus contributing dramatically to an expansion of the emotional meaning and other visual information … in a given work".
In Myth, Magic, and Mystery : One Hundred Years of American Children's Book Illustration (Boulder, CO : Roberts Rinehart Publishers, 1996), Michael Patrick Hearn quoted James Johnson Sweeney, former director of the Museum of Modern Art as follows:
"… children's book illustration should never be seen as merely a vessel for the conveyance of information. Its real role is that played by a Gothic stained glass window in the Middle Ages, or a mosaic in the apse of a Romanesque church."
Although not specifically stating the nature of the illustrations (i.e., color and/or black and white) it is very clear from the two examples that he gives, that he has color in mind: Gothic stained glass and Romanesque mosaics were rather seldom done in anything other than color. In the same vein, Lucy Rollin, another author of studies on children's literature, in support of this project, wrote:
"Our culture creates, uses, and responds to literature, even what might be considered ephemeral, for it is in the ephemera, really, that a culture truly reveals itself; such artifacts are its unguarded moments."
Through the end of the 18th century only a very small portion of book illustrations were colored, and then only by hand. Such extra effort was expensive, and therefore available only to the privileged few who could afford to present their children with more realistic representations of the world about them. With the full-blown implementation and acceptance of mechanical color printing during the 19th century, such "natural" representations of the real world - and indeed of the fantastic world of the imagination - moved from the privileged few to the mass market. Peter Hunt, in his Children's Literature, an Illustrated History (Oxford, England : Oxford University Press, 1995), provides the locus for explanation:
"For most of the early nineteenth century, colour book illustrations had meant colouring by hand, but the development of mechanical colour printing, especially by Edmund Evans, brought an immense improvement in coloured picture-books for children in the last quarter of the century."
Coloring By Hand
Image from: A B C of games. (London : Pubd. by A. Park, [ca. 1855]) |
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Image from variant states of: Jingles & jokes for little folks. (New York : McLoughlin Bros., c1869.) |
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Mechanical Coloring
| Image from: Field, Louise A. Peter Rabit and His Ma. (Chicago, IL : Saafield Publishing, 1917)) | |
To understand just how "immense" such an improvement in producing children's books with color illustrations was in the last quarter of the 19th century is only possible by examining those decades in which the process actually advanced.
In support of the need for preservation of color information in addition to that conveyed through black and white surrogates, Michael Patrick Hearn indirectly provided an additional rational for such work. He noted that "the purpose of an illustration is to be reproduced, not displayed, and artists have employed certain short cuts that have not always added to the life of the art. They often scrimped on material. Papers discolor or disintegrate, colors fade, glues dry out." It is likely that very few examples of the original artwork for the color illustration of children's books during the second half of the nineteenth century survive beyond their published versions. Conservation surveys, completed in the University of Florida's Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature, found that published material is now seriously in danger of self-destruction.
Images from: Little Sarah. (Boston : W. J. Reynolds & Co., [1851?]) |
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Color Management Strategies
While microfilm remains the only currently accepted medium for preservation reprography, preservation microfilm is an inadequate means of preserving color information. Because a sizable percentage of children's literature contains color in some format: illustration, frontispiece, title page information, book cover(s), the Literature for Children's organizers considered four color management strategies.
- Monochrome and continuous-tone microphotography (accept color loss);
- Monochrome microphotography employing the three-color process;
- Color microphotography; or
- Hybrid reproduction combining monochrome microphotography and digitization.
An optimal color management strategy must affordably preserve color, with reasonable maintenance requirements, and provide timely access to color content together with the monochromatic information accompanying it.
Monochrome And Continuous Tone Microphotography
This traditional method of preservation microfilming does not provide a functional response to the needs addressed above. Because monochrome and continuous tone microphotography reduces all information to shades of gray, such an approach implies an acceptance of color loss, and because there is no capture of the color information contained in children's books, it is an inadequate strategy for overall intellectual color management.
Images from: The dogs' grand dinner party. (New York : McLoughlin Brothers, c1869. |
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Images from: Edgeworth, Maria, 1767-1849. The bracelets, or, Amiability and industry rewarded. (Philadelphia : Geo. S. Appleton, 1850.) |
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Three-color Process Microphotography
The three-color process is a traditional, if rarely used, method of monochrome microphotography that would produce film that meets the requirements of preservation microfilming. The process is the analog equivalent of separating a digital image into component color channels. For any single source-document page, three exposures are created. The first exposure is made with standard white lighting, followed by reshoots with, respectively, a yellow filter and a blue filter. Each exposure is committed to preservation microfilm per RLG preservation microfilming guidelines.
The split color components (red, green, & blue), below, of the digital image are roughly comparable to the color-filtered images of the Three-Color Process
Images from: The dogs' grand dinner party. (New York : McLoughlin Brothers, c1869.) |
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Images from: Edgeworth, Maria, 1767-1849. The bracelets, or, Amiability and industry rewarded. (Philadelphia : Geo. S. Appleton, 1850.) |
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Color is restored through an on-demand process of additional color filtering and amalgamation of the filtered separations into one color offprint. The multiple exposures would adversely affect project cost; and color restoration, when necessary, would be prohibitively expensive. Three-color process microphotography, at best, is an oblique strategy for color management.
Color Microphotography
Color microfilming would immediately and simply meet the requirement for color image capture. Color microfilm, however, does not meet the requirements for preservation microfilming as recognized by RLG preservation microfilming guidelines. Nonetheless, the Commission on Preservation and Access (CPA), reviewing the findings of its commissioned study of color microphotography, found Ilfochrome Classic (formerly, Ilford's Cibachrome) microfilm to be an acceptable method for preserving color illustration. Ilfochrome Classsics' Azo dyes are legendary for their longevity (i.e., light fastness) in dark, cold storage to AIIM standard (IT9.11).
But, the reasons for not electing color microphotography as a color management strategy are several; each is a factor of time and cost. CPA's report points to the difficulties of Ilfochrome Classic in the production environment. "With respect to sensitometry, Cibachrome film is slower and has higher contrast making it somewhat more difficult to work with," the report concludes. Instructions for the film's MRD camera controller unit illustrate the detail of care that must be taken. Exposure time is nominally 5% greater than that required for standard monochrome microfilm. And, the report continues, "local environmental laws may make processing Cibachrome film difficult;" a reference to the climate controls that must be taken both during exposure and developing, as well as, in storage of the film.
The word "environmental" might be substituted with the word, "economical". The cost of Ilfochrome Classic compares negatively to that of a hybrid procedure involving standard microfilming for preservation followed by controlled digitization of color content. "Finally," the report concludes, "in the case of service and use copies of [Ilfochrome Classic] film, handling damage may nullify any longevity benefit gained". In its more extensive report, "Preserving the Illustrated Text", also dated 1992, the authors describe Ilfochrome Classic as an "intermediate technology". Indeed, the report calls for use of "mixed" technologies of standard microfilming for preservation and digitization of images for color illustrations.
Images from: The dogs' grand dinner party. (New York : McLoughlin Brothers, c1869.) |
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Images from: Edgeworth, Maria, 1767-1849. The bracelets, or, Amiability and industry rewarded. (Philadelphia : Geo. S. Appleton, 1850.) |
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Hybrid Monochrome Microtogrophy With Color Digitization
Color digitization converts color information to a digital stream of zeros and ones; any given combination may represent one of twenty-four million colors. Calibrated scans generate "true" colors. And, assuming calibrated monitors, displayed color information is as faithfully as it was when captured. Digital color when optimally maintained and migrated, is stable within active use, storage and across generations as it migrates forward. And, color information can be made readily and universally available via the Internet, in contrast to the dull and limited capacity of the three color process.
But, like color microphotography, digitization is not a recognized means of preservation. In a community traditionally focused upon media life expectancy, digital media, hardware and software each are relatively short-lived. Monitoring industry trends and digital assets requires more attentiveness if not more skill than maintaining a color film archive. Standards and methods for digital image creation, archiving, and migration are not fully agreed upon or well tested. But, access to storage facilities and the availability of experienced staff for the support of digital images, in contrast to that for color film, is good. A hybrid method, microfilming for preservation and digitizing for access, efficiently designed, is optimal.
This project proposes to use the hybrid method; and the particular method adopted by this project is exactly as recommended by the Commission on Preservation and Access' report on "Preserving the Illustrated Text". Monochrome microphotography is not truly a color management strategy. Both the three-color process and color microphotography are neither sound or fiscally justifiable strategies. To mitigate the extensive storage requirements that would result from 24-bit scanning of whole volumes with limited amounts of color, all volumes initially will be preservation microfilmed. Subsequently, the microfilm will be converted into digital surrogates in 8-bit gray-scale. Pages with color information, scanned from the source document by either flatbed scanner or digital camera, will replace the page images from the converted microfilms.
Images from: The dogs' grand dinner party. (New York : McLoughlin Brothers, c1869.) |
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Images from: Edgeworth, Maria, 1767-1849. The bracelets, or, Amiability and industry rewarded. (Philadelphia : Geo. S. Appleton, 1850.) |
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Related Sites
Organizations
- American Library Association (ALA)
- Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC)
- Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA)
National Council of Teachers of English
Bibliographies and Web Maps
- Children's Literature Web Guide at the University of Calgary
- Children's Books Central
- Kids on the Web: Children's Books
Collections Elsewhere
- Arkley Collection of Children's Literature at the University of British Columbia Library
- Baldwin Library of American and British Historical Children's Literature at the University of Florida
- Canadian Children's Literature
- Children's Historical Literature Disseminated throughout Europe (CHILDE) Project
- Children's Literature Collection at the Lilly Library, Indiana University
- Children's Literature Research Collections at the University of Minnesota
- Illustrated Classics at the E-Texts Center at the University of Virginia
- Lu Rees Archives of Australian Children's Literature at the University of Canberra,
- Canberra, Australia
- The Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books at the Toronto Public Library
- Sunday School Books at the Library of Congress' American Memory
- Svenska Barnboksinstitutet (Swedish Institute for Children's Books)
- UK Children's Books
- Library of Congress. Lewis Carroll Scrapbook
Commercial Sites
Discussion Groups
Education Resources
Multi-Media Projects
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Credits
Feedback, advice, and general guidance
members of the Digitization Projects Planning Committee,with special thanks to Institutional Representatives:
- Zita Cael, Florida Atlantic University
- John Ingram, University of Florida
- Rita Smith, University of Florida
Additional assistance with selection
- Jeffrey Barr, University of Florida
- Stephanie Haas, University of Florida
- Melody Smith, University of Florida
Help Using this Site
- Anjana Bhatt, Florida Gulf Coast University
- Lisa Tatum, FCLA
Collection logo design
- Priscilla Caplan, FCLA
- University of Florida
- Ellen Purcell, FCLA
- Tennille L. Herron, FCLA (Revised 2011)
Website design and maintenance
- Tennille L. Herron, FCLA
Technical support team at FCLA
- Priscilla Caplan
- Elaine Henjum
- Maggie Hogue
- Gerald Snyder
Cataloging guidelines
Cataloging and Access Guidelines for Electronic Resources, with special thanks to:
- Tatiana Barr, University of Florida
- Jimmie Lundgren, University of Florida
- Jim Michael, University of South Florida
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Rita Smith
Curator, Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature
Dept of Special Collections and Area Studies
George A. Smathers Libraries
University of Florida
P.O. Box 117007
Gainesville, FL 32611
Phone: (352) 392-6962
ritsmit@ufl.edu
Contacts
- FLVC Help Desk
- Director, Digital Library Center
University of Florida
Director, Digital Library Center
P.O. Box 117007
George A. Smathers Libraries
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611-7007
Phone: (352) 846-0129 Fax: (352) 846-3702
Rita Smith
Curator, Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature
Dept of Special Collections and Area Studies
George A. Smathers Libraries
University of Florida
P.O. Box 117007
Gainesville, FL 32611
Phone: (352) 392-6962
ritsmit@ufl.edu
Search this Collection
Literature for Children is a collection of the treasures of children's literature published largely in the United States and Great Britain from before 1850 to beyond 1950. At the core of this Collection are books from the Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature, housed in the Department of Special Collections and Area Studies at the University of Florida. Books from the Departments of Special Collections at the Florida Atlantic University, Florida State University, and the University of South Florida join volumes from the Baldwin Library to complete the Collection. The foundation for this Collection was a cataloging and preservation microfilming project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The NEH project included a digital color management strategy for the reproduction of illustrations as children saw them.
