Children’s Creations and Archiving Practices: Methodological Matters Special Issue Introduction

This introduction provides a context for the collection of essays that follow in this special issue on research methodology related to studying children’s creations in archives. First, we center children’s creations as significant sources for interdisciplinary researchers interested in learning more about children’s contributions to history, the historical record, and childhood studies. We then describe some of the politics and practices—including preservation, cataloging, and circulation—within formal and informal archiving that may have implications for scholars attempting to use archived children’s creations. We then offer some examples of research that focus on children’s perspectives, accounts, or archival sources, highlighting some of the ethical concerns these have raised. Finally, we introduce the papers that make up this issue, with contributions from many disciplines and discussions of several media types.