Childe: Using the internet to explore the heritage of European children's literature

Abstract

The CHILDE (Children's Historical Literature Disseminated Throughout Europe) project was developed by Buckinghamshire County Library Service's European team, with six partners from Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Ireland and the UK. In May 2000 a bid was submitted to the European Commission Culture 2000 programme. In October 2000 the CHILDE partners were informed of the bid's success and a grant of £60,000 (€ 100,000) was awarded. The CHILDE partners have worked together since November 2000 to successfully: • select, photograph and digitise a total of 1,070 illustrations from the six European historical children's book collections • create a website (www.bookchilde.org) to showcase the digitised images • set metadata criteria and create a database for bibliographic information • publish on the website an Education Programme and Best Practice Report • host an international conference. The success of CHILDE has led to plans to establish the foundations of a European network of historical children's book collections. A call for new partners in the summer of 2001 received a phenomenal response, over 60 organisations, public, private, academic and national, from across Europe expressed an interest. With this much support and enthusiasm the future for CHILDE looks bright.