Booklinks for Collectors

Three Sites to Get You Started
Childrens Literature Web Guide, David Brown, University of Calgary. A comprehensive site on children's books with many links.
Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Site. Especially useful for teachers.
Vandergrift's Children's Literature Page, Rutgers University. A large collection of scholarly resources on children's literature. Especially see Traditional Literature - Social History.

Library Collections of Rare Children's Books
WorldCat gives you access to libraries world wide, most with knowledgeable annotations, a few with errors, but it is definitely the first place to look, especially for books from the 19th c and before.
Library of Congress. About 60 important rare children's books that you can view page by page. Children's books are scattered throughout the LC special collections, and thus there is little organized information on this site.
The Cotsen Collection at Princeton University recently donated and endowed to serve children and researchers both. An interesting site.
The de Grummond Collection of Children's Literature, University of Mississippi A very large collection, well explained. Kind of what you would expect of the Library of Congress.
Children's Literature Research Collections, University of Minnesota. Includes several special collections, OZ, Paul Bunyan, Treasure Island, and also the Kerlan Collection, a research collection with children's literature in manuscript.
Your Old Books. American Library Association. A guide from the Rare Book and Manuscript Selection of the ALA answering your questions about acquiring, collecting, maintaining, selling, and donating rare books.

Purchasing New Books
First try your local, independent bookstore...look for an independent bookseller through IndieBound, formerly Book Sense, from the American Bookseller's Association. You can select children's specialist bookstores near you or find those with websites. You'll talk to booksellers who will care about books and children! Most offer comparable prices to A, B,and B&N.

The Horn Book
From History archives with a 75 year retrospective to the Editor's blog and recent podcasts, this site has hours of interesting material. A grand old publication, founded by the "foremothers" of the field of children's literature in this country. Contains reviews of current books, along with many retrospective articles of interest to the collector. Look for old issues in bookstores. We have some for sale, also. In most libraries. 1-800-325-1170.

If your interest is contemporary fiction in the United States you will also want to look at:
BCCB, The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books.

Miscellaneous Resources Database of Award-Winning Children's Literature. We are interested in encouraging individual taste. so we have reservations when it comes to children's book awards. Certainly, fine books for children existed prior to 1921 and if children lose the ability to "translate" from the language of an earlier era, it will only reinforced our present-centeredness....Be that as it may, this frequently updated site is quite amazing:

DAWCL has over 8,000 records from  86 awards across six English-speaking countries (United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, England, and Ireland). Click the link Explanation of Awards above to see a list of awards, their countries, and a brief explanation. Each book is indexed to some degree so users can find it using the form search or the keyword search. As I read a book, I index it more fully. Naturally, DAWCL is always a work in progress, so results will change with the addition of new awards, award-winners, and my reading/indexing habits." Lisa R. Bartle.

Caring for books
Binding books -
Trappist Abbey Bookbindery. Probably the best tip on this site! The workmanship of this bindery is beautiful and the costs are reasonable. Set in the lovely Willamette Valley of Oregon.
"We specialize in thesis, dissertation, family history, genealogy, specialty, bible, periodical and monograph binding for individuals as well as for university and other libraries. Please contact us for per copy pricing quotes for either short-run (50 or more) or long-run quantities of a printing.
All volumes are hardcover binding with buckram fabric, according to norms set by the Library Binding Institute for Class A Library Binding, including the requisite acid-free materials."
Trappist Abbey Bookbindery
PO Box 97, Lafayette, OR 97127-0097
9200 NE Abbey Road, Carlton, OR 97111
(503) 852-0106 Phone | (503) 852-7748 Fax
bindery@trappistabbey.org
http://www.bookbindery.org/
Covering jackets:
Archival jacket protectors cost very little more than regular ones and are available from Demco, Brodart, Highsmith, etc. We like the Brodart Just a Fold, which insert from the top. Over the years, those protectors that split in the middle of the backing leave a ridge and finally a dirty line in the jacket; it is very easy to damage a jacket with an end insertion style. We no longer tape protectors closed nor do we use any protectors that come with tape: there is too much danger of the tape catching on the jacket itself. For collectible books, protectors without tape work well and allow inspection of the jacket.

And don't forget

Steve Trussel's Books and Book Collecting for links to everything else!