Digital Collections

As you explore the Library's website, you are likely to run across old favorites and unexpected treasures. You will encounter historical mindsets and perspectives that may be both illuminating and uncomfortable. Feel free to Ask a Librarian for help when you have questions.

Primary Sources

The Library's digital collections contain a variety of primary source materials related to historical children's books, including scanned books, articles from historical newspapers, and prints and photographs. We have provided links below to some relevant collections, as well as tips and strategies for searching the Library's website more broadly, to find additional resources on this topic.

Children's Book Selections Digital Collection
This collection presents digital versions of sixty-seven children’s books selected from the General and Rare Book Collections at the Library of Congress. These include classic works that are still read by children today, and lesser-known treasures drawn from the Library’s extensive collection of historically significant children’s books. The books in this collection were published in the United States and England before 1924, and are free to read and share.
Digitized Books from the General Collections
This collection is made up of digital versions of books from the Library of Congress General Collections on a wide range of subjects. Most of the books in this collection were published in the United States before 1924 and are in English, but there are also some materials in other languages or that were published elsewhere. The collection features hundreds of works of fiction published between 1800 and 1922, including books intended for children and young adults. We plan to add to the collection over time.
Rare Books Selections Digital Collection
The digitized selections offered here represent a few of the most interesting and important items in the Library's rare book collection, including a copy of the Gutenberg Bible, Thomas Jefferson’s copy of The Federalist, medieval manuscripts, books relating to cookery, children's literature, and many more.
Rare Illustrated Children's Books in Hebrew and Yiddish, 1900 - 1929
The Library of Congress is home to a superb collection of rare children’s books and periodicals in Hebrew and Yiddish, among them the very first ever printed for children in these languages. Most of the sixty titles in this collection are still under copyright according to international law or presumed to be under copyright because they were published in the 20th century. For this reason, we present before you now only five of these titles in digital form: the five that have been determined to be in the public domain . These are freely available to anyone with an internet connection anywhere in the world. The other fifty-five books and periodicals have also been fully digitized and are available only onsite at the Library of Congress.

Browsing and Searching for Digitized Children's Books

Browse the Library's digital collections to find examples of scanned books throughout the site. Use the navigation facets along the left side of the page to narrow your results. While searching an individual collection can sometimes provide more focused and streamlined results, searching across the collections by format accesses a greater range of materials (and introduces an element of surprise!).

Browse by format: Books/Print Materials (with page images)

Search Tips for Children's Books

Catalog records for older children's books in the online collections do not generally indicate the age of the intended audience. A subset of records may contain juvenile subject headings, but the majority do not. You may find it helpful to experiment. Try searching or browsing the collections for the name of a particular author or illustrator. Consider naming patterns or keyword phrases that publishers or authors may have used to signal that their books were intended for children. We have provided some examples of each of these approaches below.

Browse using Subject or Genre Headings

These are some examples of headings associated with children's materials on the Library's website:

Browse by Author/Creator Name

Browse by Library of Congress Classification

Search by Keyword/Phrase

Keyword phrases like these may also be useful when searching for historical children's books in the digital collections:

Boy's book
Child's book
Child's History
Children of the...
Children's Stories
Fairy tales

First book of...
For young people
Girl's book
Little Folks'
Little ones
Little people

Nursery tales
Primer
Stories children
Story book
Young Readers

Using Facets to Narrow Your Search

Use the facets (narrowing strategies) along the left side of the search screen to navigate your search results. Facets are particularly useful for quickly narrowing down a large set of results to the most relevant materials. Some useful facets include:

Original Format (Photographs, Legislation, Maps, Manuscripts, Books, etc.)
Online Format (Image, PDF, Online Text, EPUB)
Note - Selecting "Image" is a good option for narrowing results to scanned books available from the Library's website. (Many books from the Library's collections have been scanned by partners, and we are in the process of moving the resulting files to the Library's site. For the moment, these scans may be accessed through links in their records in the Library's online catalog).
Date
Location
Subject
Note - Select the link at the bottom of the initial list to view More Subjects >> You will be able to view these either alphabetically or by number of matches.
Language
Part of/Collection

Other Formats

Historic Newspapers

Chronicling America
Historic American newspapers selected and contributed by state partners in the National Digital Newspaper Program. Search this collection to find thousands of newspaper articles related to Children's Book Week, children's books, authors, and publishing.

Examples of articles from this collection:

Prints, Drawings & Photographs

Format: Photos, Prints, Drawings
Search across the Library's website to find prints, photographs and drawings (e.g. author portraits, illustrations, book-related posters) from a variety of online collections. Use the navigation facets along the left-hand column to narrow your results. While searching an individual collection can sometimes provide more focused and streamlined results, searching across the collections by format accesses a greater range of materials and allows for greater serendipity in the results.
Cabinet of American Illustration
Contains more than four thousand original drawings by American book, magazine, and newspaper illustrators, made primarily between 1880 and 1910. The collection includes illustrations for magazines, novels, and children's books; cartoons; cover designs; and sketches for posters. More than two hundred artists are represented, including Charles Dana Gibson, Elizabeth Shippen Green, Oliver Herford, and Jessie Wilcox Smith. The collection was the brainchild of William Patten, art editor for Harper's Magazine during the 1880s and 1890s, who established the Cabinet of American Illustration in 1932, in cooperation with the Library of Congress, in order to create a national collection of original works of art documenting what he and others considered the golden age of American illustration that took place from the 1880s through the 1920s. Donations by artists, publishers, and their families have fostered the growth of the collection.

Examples of prints and photographs from these collections

Children's Book Week and other book promotion posters
Jessie Willcox Smith
Results include examples of the works of illustrator Jessie Willcox Smith.
Louisa May Alcott
Results include portraits of Alcott, pictures of Alcott's home in Concord, Massachusetts, and illustrations from various books.
Maxfield Parrish
Results include a photographic portrait of Parrish and examples of his artwork.

Recordings

Format: Audio Recordings
Search across the Library's website to find early audio recordings of children's songs, related music, and spoken word recordings from a variety of online collections. Use the navigation facets along the left-hand column to narrow your results.

Examples of audio recordings from these collections

Children's Songs

See also: The Library of Congress Celebrates the Songs of America: Children's Songs.

Historical Children's Books at the Library of Congress: Selected Resources