smith-colonialgirlslit-2012.pdf (176.49 kB)
Colonial girls' literature and the politics of archives in the digital age
journal contribution
posted on 2012-01-01, 00:00 authored by Michelle Smith, Kristine MoruziKristine MoruziIn 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.
History
Journal
Papers: exploration into children's literatureVolume
22Issue
1Pagination
33 - 42Publisher
Magpies magazineLocation
Victoria Park, W.A.ISSN
1034-9243eISSN
1837-4530Language
engPublication classification
C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journalCopyright notice
2012, Magpies MagazineUsage metrics
Categories
No categories selectedLicence
Exports
RefWorks
BibTeX
Ref. manager
Endnote
DataCite
NLM
DC