This summer, I had the opportunity to work in Woodruff Library as a collections intern. During this internship, among other tasks, I curated an exhibit based on the Children’s Reading Program at Emory University. The exhibit will run from July through September 2025.
This experience allowed me to see how different exhibits are planned and executed within academic libraries. It further helped me accurately conceptualize and effectively work with a small collection to highlight its variety and promote its use.
It also helped me realize that there is more to collection development than just purchasing books for libraries. When creating, developing and maintaining a collection, it’s important to consider the library/institution’s mission and the community the collection is intended to serve, and its greater alignment with university departmental and divisional goals for student success and faculty research. The Children’s Reading Program collection, made up of around 4,000 unique titles, serves as a good example of a discrete set of titles that represents and reflects a particular historical moment in departmental alignment and collection building.
Collection origins and current offerings
The Children’s Reading Program collection was the collaborative product of the Division of Educational Studies and the Woodruff Library. The division was well regarded within the university in its 50+ years but was closed in the mid-2010s (along with other programs). Originally, the collection was used to support the division and students (both established and trainee teachers) reading comprehension and literacy concentrations. The collection was also a big hit with the Emory community, especially families. The collection began to grow as award winners and departmental requests were incorporated. When the division closed, the collection “closed” and became “hidden” from the community. The origins and development of such hidden collections can and should be revisited. These titles continue to be relevant and of potential interest to contemporary Emory communities (and even used in some courses). Notably, there has also been a renewed interest in children and young adult/YA (juvenilia) literature for study and evaluation at Emory. Although not part of the formal Children’s Reading Program, these additions demonstrate the importance of children’s literature and juvenilia as a genre for academic investigation.
We were not able to locate any formal collection policy regarding the development of the collection. With that said, working with metadata and interacting with titles, we could indirectly gain some understanding of the collection and its intended audience. Currently, the small collection is spread out across the stacks within Woodruff and the shelves within the Library Service Center, which is Emory and Georgia Tech’s storage facility. The collection includes various award winners and honorees (Caldecott, Coretta Scott King) which were received automatically via the Woodruff Library’s approval plan, librarian selected materials (when the Division of Education Studies had its own dedicated subject librarian), and various community gifts.
How I curated the exhibit & sub-collections
When curating this exhibit, I knew I wanted to bring attention to many of the award winners and unique items that the collection holds. For example, when browsing the collection online, I drew my attention to many of the older materials that were included. The collection had a great mix of older (1800s-early 1900s) and newer (mid/late 190
0s-2010s) books. Within the exhibit, I sorted my selected books into the following categories: unique items, award winners and honorees (Newbery, Caldecott, Coretta Scott King, Pura Belpre, Stonewall), and contemporary literature (especially those that had been adapted into TV shows and movies). It was fascinating looking into the many book awards for children and young adult literature, especially the awards that are geared towards more diverse authors and stories. I wanted to make sure that every experience would receive the right amount of representation within the exhibit.
When putting the exhibit on display, I wanted to organize my selected materials in ways that make sense for both the collection and the people who would encounter it. Even though I had limited shelf space, I think that every book has their own space to shine. My favorite part of the finished exhibit are the books that I chose to display on the shelves. I wanted to display books with fun and interesting cover designs to draw people to my exhibit. I also wanted to include books that people would remember reading as a child or young adult. Thank you to John Klingler for assisting with the graphic design, Jennifer Elder for providing feedback and searching for documentation, and Chris Palazzolo for running and providing original lists and guiding the exhibition process.
How to find related exhibits and more information
To find more exhibits highlighting the Libraries’ children’s books collections, consider the Rose Library exhibit called “Pages of Wonder” that ran from June through November of 2024. For more information about the Children’s Reading Program and other hidden gems at Emory Libraries, check out the article “Seeing is Believing” from the summer 2025 edition of Emory Magazine.
—Faith Richmond, 2025 RESC division collections intern