More-Than-Book Worlds: A Study of Childhood in a Public Library

More-than-Book Worlds is an interdisciplinary exercise in collecting information across disciplines to develop a childhood studies reading of childhood construction in the library. In an effort to collect a robust image of the constructions of childhood in libraries, I sweep areas of history, architecture, and geography, studying material culture through the scaffolding of posthuman theory. Childhood studies is a multi-disciplinary field of research that takes into consideration the complex systems playing out in broader understandings of what is a child. While scholars debate how to answer that question, there is an overarching importance put on capturing data on childhood to better understand what we mean when we talk about the child, children, or childhood. Libraries are important sites of inquiry for childhood studies because it serves as a confluence of social constructs: gender, race, disability, literacy, and class all seem to meet in the children’s reading room. My project focuses specifically on the built environment of the children’s area in a public library.