Booklinks for Collectors

Sites to Get You Started
University of Pittsburgh, Elizabeth Mahoney's Children's LIterature Guide. I find this better organized and more complete than other Child LIt hubs on the net: https://pitt.libguides.com/historyofchildrensliterature
"Your Old Books"  A guide from the Rare Book and Manuscript Selection of the ALA answering your questions about acquiring, collecting, maintaining, selling, and donating rare and older books.

Library Collections of Rare Children's Books
WorldCat 
https://www.worldcat.org/advancedsearch 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 Library https://cotsen.princeton.edu/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.
University of Minnesota Children's Literature Research
Collections https://www.lib.umn.edu/clrc Includes several special collections, OZ, Paul Bunyan, Treasure Island, and also the Kerlan Collection, a research collection with children's literature in manuscript.
Baldwin Collection of Historical Children's Literature. https://ufdc.ufl.edu/juv George A Smathers Libraries.  A collection of over 100,000 volumes with a focus on the development of children's literature. Interesting subcollections by genre.

Bookstores and Book Fairs
A few years ago we began to show at book fairs again after a 10 year lapse. It's a real pleasure to see all the beautiful books and talk to collectors and booksellers! Here is our booth at the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair. In this picture, you can see some books that aren't on this site yet, a wooden Book House (sold but we have a Christmas wooden Book House) and Jacob Lawrence's Harriet and the Promised Land. Most of the time, the booths are crowded, but late in the afternoon space opens up so people can browse. If you live near a large city, a book fair provides several days of entertainment for a modest price, rare and scarce books in beautiful condition that you will not see on the internet, as well as more modest offerings.  Book Source Magazine's book fair calendar is currently up to date. 

Bookbird
The journal of IBBY, The International Board on Books for Young People, published in English by Johns Hopkins University Press. Current books reviewed, conference information. Articles on international children's books by genre and culture, which are very hard to find elsewhere. Very interesting. Subscribe online.

The Horn Book https://www.hbook.com/
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. from the University of Illinois https://bccb.ischool.illinois.edu/

Blogs and personal websites
There are so many good ones out there ... we will be adding to this section and would love suggestions that pertain to children's book collecting. Our favorite, no longer posts:

Peter Sieruta's Collecting Children's Books  "most of my life, from my earliest days working in the grade school library to my current job cataloging children's books for a university. I've published young adult fiction, as well as thousands of book reviews, and have contributed articles and essays to a number of magazines and reference volumes dealing with the topic of children's books. To see the books in my collection, please visit librarything.com/catalog/Psierut and click on "author" to get an alphabetical-by-author view."

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, but this site lists a huge variety. 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 meticulously updated site is quite amazing:

DAWCL has over 10,000 records from 126 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. For collectible books without jackets, we use the film from Just a Fold to make clear book covers, leaving space at the spine for air circulation. Although not as attractive as the heavy mylar clear book jackets we make for fair books, these protect the books in our shop very well and are safe to leave in place.

Recommended Booksearchers
Please see Looking for a Book? for ideas on book searching and for the address of Jerryl Metz, who will conduct an individual search. We are always happy to help you identify books from our general knowledge. However, we know nothing about pulp series books or mass market books, and your public librarian will know more about books from the last forty years. For online searching, we recommend Worldcat https://www.worldcat.org/advancedsearch, mentioned above.

And don't forget

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