A Token to the Future: A Digital ‘Archive’ of Early Australian Children’s Literature

Authors

  • Kerry Mallan Queensland University of Technology, Australia
  • Amy Cross Queensland University of Technology, Australia
  • Cherie Allan Queensland University of Technology, Australia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21153/pecl2012vol22no1art1127

Keywords:

early Australian children's literature, digital archives, Children’s Literature Digital Resources (CLDR), AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource

Abstract

The archive has always been a pledge, and like every pledge [gage], a token of the future. To put it more trivially: what is no longer archived in the same way is no longer lived in the same way. Archivable meaning is also and in advance codetermined by the structure that archives. It begins with the printer. (Derrida 1995, p.18)

As Derrida notes the printer is the originary source that enables the production of an archive whether it is a rare or special book collection, or a digital archive. The scope and purpose of any archive or special collection vary according to institutional or personal reasons, and budget. In his article, ‘The Child, the Scholar, and the Children’s Literature Archive’ (2011), Kenneth Kidd writes that ‘like the canon, the archive promises coherence and totality, reinforces the idea of a literary heritage... For scholars, the archive is primarily a site for research’ (p.2). Kidd is quite right to imply that what an archive promises may not be achievable. An archive is always incomplete, never a totality. It also offers a partial account of a literary heritage; it can never offer the complete picture as history is always marked by silences and absences, and the literature of any country is similarly never fully accounted. Previously unknown writers of the past and forgotten stories continually emerge as historians and literary scholars undertake their own specialised archaeological digs as these texts ‘burrow into the past’ separating readers from them at an astonishing rate (Derrida, 1995, p.18).

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Author Biographies

  • Kerry Mallan, Queensland University of Technology, Australia

    Kerry Mallan is a Professor in the Faculty of Education and Director of the Children and Youth Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology. She has published extensively in children’s literature and film, as well as in the area of digital cultures. Her most recent sole authored book is Gender Dilemmas in Children’s Fiction (2009) and a co-edited book with Clare Bradford entitled Contemporary Approaches to Children’s Literature and Film: Engaging with Theory (2011). She is a series editor (with Clare Bradford) of Critical Approaches to Children’s Literature (Palgrave Macmillan).

  • Amy Cross, Queensland University of Technology, Australia

    Amy Cross is a Project Officer at Queensland University of Technology for two major Australian Research Council funded projects: Children’s Literature Digital Resources and Asian-­Australian Children’s Literature and Publishing. She also works as a Research Assistant on the Australian Research Council funded DECRA project, Who Wins? Who Loses?: The Social Values of Australian Children’s Book Awards. Amy received her Master of Arts in Children’s Literature from Macquarie University in 2009.

  • Cherie Allan, Queensland University of Technology, Australia

    Cherie Allan teaches Children’s Literature at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. She has also worked on a number of research projects for AustLit: the Australian Literature Resource, including AACLAP. She is affiliated with the Children and Youth Research Centre at QUT. Her forthcoming book is entitled Playing with Picturebooks: Postmodernism and the Postmodernesque (Palgrave, 2012).

References

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Published

2012-01-01

Issue

Vol. 22 No. 1 (2012)

Section

Articles

How to Cite

“A Token to the Future: A Digital ‘Archive’ of Early Australian Children’s Literature” (2012) Papers: Explorations into Children’s Literature, 22(1), pp. 94–108. doi:10.21153/pecl2012vol22no1art1127.

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