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Panel Chair: Dr. Kenneth B. Kidd, University of FloridaPanel Title: Digital Futures of Analog Histories:?Data Mining, Digitization, and Digital Pedagogy?in the Baldwin Library of Historical Children's LiteraturePaper 1: Quantifying Bias: Tracing Children’s Literature’s Canonization Through Data Mining of Historical Book Lists by Rebekah FitzsimmonsIn the last decade, children’s literature scholars and experts have increasingly called attention to the lack of diversity in the American children’s literature market and have initiated powerful online grassroots campaigns in favor of increasing the diversity in texts written, published, marketed, taught and studied within the field. In calling for more diverse texts, these same scholars have also begun to look for explanations as to why the field of children’s literature is, and has been, dominated by narratives that focus on white, Christian, Western, heterosexual/cisgendered, upper or middle class youth. In other forms of research, I have presented the argument that the preference for these types of narratives can be traced back to some of the field’s influential “founding mothers” such as Caroline Hewins, the first children’s literature librarian at the Hartford Public Library in the 1880s. While Hewins and her contemporary colleagues were doing ground-breaking, important work in establishing the field of children’s literature, they were also establishing evaluative criteria for “good children’s books” that were based on their own cultural contexts and biases. In order to further research in this area, I am currently working on a digital humanities project to compile, scan and analyze lists published by early children’s literature experts, many of which are housed in the Baldwin Collection, for the purpose of providing quantitative data to help support the argument that the evaluative criteria for children’s literature prizes, publishing, and suitability for children are based on antiquated standards established at the turn of the 20th century. This presentation will center around my work on Hewins’s 1882 publication “Books for the Young: A Guide for Parents and Children,” and will present both a literary analysis of Hewins’s work along with a quantitative analysis of the text using data mining tools and other digital humanities techniques. In using this dual approach as a case study, this paper will demonstrate the ways in which Hewins’s evaluative criteria continues to exert extraordinary influence on the way children’s books are evaluated, distributed, recommended and taught today. Paper 2: A Digital Reimag(in)ing of Movable Books in the Baldwin Special Collections?by Emily Brooks?It was ten years ago that the National Endowment for the Humanities first granted the Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature at the University of Florida?nearly $300,000 to digitize 2,500 children's books in the archives. Of the nearly 6,000 items in the UF Digital Collections now tagged for the Baldwin, less than 20 items can be found in the category of "toy and movable books." The Baldwin has a tremendous collection of movable books but they do not translate well via the traditional methods of book digitization: photographs, scans, or transcriptions. Movable books require a more innovative approach to digitization that accounts for temporal and spatial displacement. The technologies to digitize via video and 3D models are more accessible and affordable than ever before, but large-scale digitization projects still require many resources. My project aims to better take into account the materiality of movable books by exploring multiple methods of digitization; finding optimal solutions based on type of movability, accessibility, and cost; and exploring best archival practices. In terms of options, there are multitudes of scanning tools to choose from, such as a lower-resolution mobile application like Autodesk's 123D Catch which uses a tablet's built-in camera and photogrammetry, Structure's 3D scanner which attaches a depth camera to an iPad to capture 3D models, or a desktop application like Autodesk ReMake which can use high-resolution photographs from any camera. Furthermore, optimization requires specialization;?movable books incorporating pull tabs are better digitized via a time-based medium like video while intricate pop-ups are better digitized via a spatial-based medium like 3D scanning.?The last step is to archive the data online in a mobile-friendly manner so that it can be more globally accessible. I envision a future where children, scholars, or enthusiasts anywhere, anytime can experience the playful nature of movable books in more dimensions.Paper 3: Harold and Little Black Sambo in the Baldwin: Intersections of Race, Materiality and Digital Pedagogy in the Special Collections Classroom by Poushali BhaduryThe Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature at the University of Florida (UF) offers unique teaching opportunities for scholars working at the intersections of children’s literature and book history. The vast array of historical primary texts in the Baldwin—with its special emphasis on used books featuring child readers’ marginalia—provides a robust entry-point into discussing issues of materiality with students. This presentation focuses on a specific pedagogical case study: teaching the complex racial and imperial politics embedded in various editions, retellings and adaptations of Helen Bannerman’s Little Black Sambo (1899), as part of an upper-division undergraduate class on “The Golden Age of Children’s Literature”. The Baldwin houses several rare editions of Sambo, including a pop-up book version and an operetta for kindergarten and primary grades, which were crucial to framing my students’ engagement with the text(s). Moreover, I taught using both digital and print texts—this allowed students to explore the constantly evolving forms in which a book may present itself, the mutating relationship between text and image, and the racist implications of different textual elements in Bannerman’s notorious picture book. ?In the context of increasingly fraught racial politics in the United States, it becomes even more crucial to revisit classic children’s texts responsible for perpetuating equal-opportunity racism, as it were—against Indians as well as African-Americans, in case of Sambo—in order to unpack the insidious messages embedded therein. This also helps establish for students the continuing relevance of historical children’s fiction to decode current political climates, and provides a broader historically-grounded analytical arsenal for discussing race and social justice issues in 21st-century America. ?Beyond the above case study, my presentation will also focus on select creative/critical student projects from the same upper-division class, on works ranging from Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden (1911) to Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon (1955). Students designed these image-text projects to be displayed on the official website of the Baldwin Library as examples of undergraduate research based on UF Library Special Collections. The projects thus showcase transformative student/library collaborations that radically extend the boundaries of the brick-and-mortar classroom via digital exhibition spaces. Paper 4: Sacred and Taboo: Initiating Students into the Baldwin Collection by Kristen GregoryIn the Spring of 2016, I piloted a new upper-division course designed to foster undergraduate research in the Baldwin Collection at the University of Florida, which culminated in a thematic digital exhibit of Baldwin materials. My course, titled “Cradle and Grave: Childhood and Death in the Baldwin,” focused on Baldwin materials that bring the child into contact with death. The Baldwin Collection granted us access to both rare and popular eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century texts that grapple with childhood and death in interesting and varied ways. Our readings included fairy tales like “The Little Match Girl” and “The Almond Tree”, cautionary tales for children including The New England Primer and Der Struwwelpeter, Edward Gorey’s macabre illustrated books, and young adult problem novels like A Summer to Die. My paper will focus on the Baldwin as a generative site of undergraduate research, in large part because it is a sacred space in which our undergraduate students can encounter the taboo. The Baldwin feels sacred to our undergraduate students for a few reasons. First, they imagine that the space itself and the rare materials it contains are too special to be perused by undergraduate students. Throughout the semester, several students remarked at how illicit it felt to touch, read, and digitize these materials. Some of them were hesitant to even lay a finger on any of the older texts. Second, as a collection of historical children’s literature, the Baldwin contains materials that reflect drastically different visions of childhood than those with which our students are most familiar. Thus, the content of the Collection also felt taboo, especially in a class focused on representations of childhood and death. Ultimately, I found that entering the sacred space of the Baldwin and confronting the taboo topics it contains made the students feel privileged and empowered, and it showed in their investment in the final project. Thus, the final portion of my paper will highlight the work done by these students on our Omeka site: . ................
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