A Token to the Future: A Digital ‘Archive’ of Early Australian Children’s Literature

The archive has always been a pledge, and like every pledge [gage], a token of the future. To put it more trivially: what is no longer archived in the same way is no longer lived in the same way. Archivable meaning is also and in advance codetermined by the structure that archives. It begins with the printer. (Derrida 1995, p.18)As Derrida notes the printer is the originary source that enables the production of an archive whether it is a rare or special book collection, or a digital archive. The scope and purpose of any archive or special collection vary according to institutional or personal reasons, and budget. In his article, ‘The Child, the Scholar, and the Children’s Literature Archive’ (2011), Kenneth Kidd writes that ‘like the canon, the archive promises coherence and totality, reinforces the idea of a literary heritage... For scholars, the archive is primarily a site for research’ (p.2). Kidd is quite right to imply that what an archive promises may not be achievable. An archive is always incomplete, never a totality. It also offers a partial account of a literary heritage; it can never offer the complete picture as history is always marked by silences and absences, and the literature of any country is similarly never fully accounted. Previously unknown writers of the past and forgotten stories continually emerge as historians and literary scholars undertake their own specialised archaeological digs as these texts ‘burrow into the past’ separating readers from them at an astonishing rate (Derrida, 1995, p.18).