Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books. The project tries to make these as free as possible, in long-lasting, open formats that can be used on almost any computer. As of 23 June 2018, Project Gutenberg reached 57,000 items in its collection of free eBooks.
Diana Wynne Jones was a British novelist, poet, academic, literary critic, and short story writer. She principally wrote fantasy and speculative fiction novels for children and adults.
Susan Mary Cooper is an English author of children's books. She is best known for The Dark Is Rising, a contemporary fantasy series set in England and Wales, which incorporates British mythology, such as the Arthurian legends, and Welsh folk heroes. For that work, in 2012 she won the lifetime Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association, recognizing her contribution to writing for teens. In the 1970s two of the five novels were named the year's best English-language book with an "authentic Welsh background" by the Welsh Books Council.
A public library is a library that is accessible by the general public and is usually funded from public sources, such as taxes. It is operated by librarians and library paraprofessionals, who are also civil servants.
Margaret Mahy, ONZ was a New Zealand author of children's and young adult books. Many of her story plots have strong supernatural elements but her writing concentrates on the themes of human relationships and growing up. She wrote more than 100 picture books, 40 novels and 20 collections of short stories. At her death she was one of thirty writers to win the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Medal for her "lasting contribution to children's literature".
The Free Library of Philadelphia is the public library system that serves Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is the 13th-largest public library system in the United States. Unique among public libraries in the United States, it is neither a city agency nor a nonprofit organization; instead, it is governed by both an independent city agency managed by its own board of directors and a separate nonprofit organization, The Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation.
Toronto Public Library (TPL) is a public library system in Toronto, Ontario. It is the largest public library system in Canada and in 2008, had averaged a higher circulation per capita than any other public library system internationally, making it the largest neighbourhood-based library system in the world. Within North America, it also had the highest circulation and visitors when compared to other large urban systems. Established as the library of the Mechanics' Institute in 1830, the Toronto Public Library now consists of 100 branch libraries and has over 12 million items in its collection.
Megan Whalen Turner is an American writer of fantasy fiction for young adults. She is best known for her novel The Thief and its four sequels. In 1997, The Thief was named a Newbery Honor book.
Eleanor Frances (Butler) Cameron was a children's author and critic. She published 20 books in her lifetime, including The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet (1954) and its sequels, a collection of critical essays called The Green and Burning Tree (1969), and The Court of the Stone Children (1973), which won the U.S. National Book Award in category Children's Books
Elizabeth Yates McGreal was an American writer. She may be known best for the biographical novel Amos Fortune, Free Man, winner of the 1951 Newbery Medal. She had been a Newbery runner-up in 1944 for Mountain Born. She began her writing career as a journalist, contributing travel articles to The Christian Science Monitor and The New York Times. Many of her books were illustrated by the British artist Nora S. Unwin.
Evaline Ness was an American commercial artist, illustrator, and author of children's books. She illustrated more than thirty books for young readers and wrote several of her own. She is noted for using a great variety of artistic media and methods.
Iona Margaret Balfour Opie, and Peter Mason Opie were a married team of folklorists, who applied modern techniques to children's literature, summarised in their studies The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1951) and The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (1959). They were also noted anthologists, and assembled large collections of children's literature, toys, and games.
Evenings at Home, or The Juvenile Budget Opened (1792–1796) is a collection of six volumes of stories written by John Aikin and his sister Anna Laetitia Barbauld. It is an early example of children's literature. The late Victorian children's writer Mary Louisa Molesworth named it as one of the handful of books that was owned by every family in her childhood and read enthusiastically. In their introduction, the authors explain the title in these words:
Catherine Butler is an English academic and author of children's fiction.
Alfred Edward Newton (1864–1940) was an American author, publisher, and avid book collector. He is best known for his book Amenities of Book Collecting (1918) which sold over 25,000 copies. At the time of his death, it was estimated that he had approximately 10,000 books in his collection, focusing on English and American literary works, the major part of which were auctioned by Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York in April, May, and October 1941. Highlights of the sale included the autographed manuscripts of Thomas Hardy's novel Far From the Madding Crowd and Charles Lamb's essay Dream Children. However, the fall in rare book prices steadily through the Great Depression meant that many sold lots brought only a fraction of prices they would have realized at the time of the Jerome Kern sale in 1929. The three volume Newton sale catalogue remains a useful reference for literature collectors.
The Children's Literature Association (ChLA) is a non-profit association, based in the United States, of scholars, critics, professors, students, librarians, teachers, and institutions dedicated to studying children's literature. Begun in the 1970s to generate interest in children's literature as an academic discipline and to provide a place for those studying children's literature to share ideas, the association sponsors an annual conference, two scholarly journals, and a series of awards. The association has also published a series of essays, Touchstones, attempting to establish a canon of children's literature.
Kathi Appelt is an American author of more than forty books for children and young adults. She won the annual PEN USA award for Children's Literature recognizing The Underneath (2008).
The Colby College Libraries are the libraries that support Colby College in Waterville, Maine. The libraries provide access to a merged catalog of more than eight million items via the Colby-Bates-Bowdoin consortium of libraries and MaineCat, with daily courier service from other libraries in Maine. Another consortium, NExpress, comprising Colby, Bates, Bowdoin, Middlebury, Northeastern, Wellesley, and Williams, provides additional access to research materials. Twelve professional librarians provide research assistance to students, faculty, and outside researchers. Instruction in the use of the library and its research materials is offered throughout the curriculum, from an introduction in beginning English classes to in-depth subject searching using sophisticated tools in upper-level classes.
