Researchers at the Faculty of Education are conducting a project entitled “Decolonising Digital Childhoods” that will study materials in the Homerton College Library.

The project aims to “pilot techniques for diversifying digital access to and content within archives of childhood” by working on materials held in the Homerton College Library, as well as in the Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature at the University of Florida, which are among the largest collections of children’s literature in the UK and US respectively.

Co-investigators Zoe Jaques and Eugene Giddens said: “It is a dereliction of our duty as gatekeepers to allow such casual racism [in children’s literature] to go unchecked.”

It is expected that the project will recommend the use of trigger warnings on racist content in library collections to the Homerton College Library.

The project, which received an £80,633 grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, will culminate with an online exhibition of 20 children’s books “designed to explicitly engage with decolonising historical children’s literature.”

The authors also argue that “trigger warnings, with indications of harmful content for intersectional identities, will protect researchers, children, and general readers from offensiveness or hurt that can emerge in otherwise safe search queries or acts of browsing.”

This article was updated on 05/11/2021 to resolve inaccuracies after contact from Homerton College