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Where to find the sources
Survival and preservation of school textbooks has been due to sentimental reasons than to the fact of being considered books as such, in the respectful sense of the term, or perceived as documentary sources with historical, political, and pedagogical value. School textbooks have suffered from certain neglect in library classifications, as if they were secondary rated books, minor literature, or works of little cultural importance. For many years, the few school books that were kept in libraries survived without being properly classified or catalogued. In some occasions, this cataloguing was not precise: lacking information precisely on the fact that it was a school textbook or being mixed and confused with other kind of books. This situation made it impossible to know if they were school textbooks or not. With time, they began to be incorporated into special collections, classified and catalogued, and frequently introduced in the sections of books for children and young people. Most of these special collections have been constituted thanks to donations of particular individuals or to the work of collectors. The particular origin of the school book together with the use it has been given by its owner (one or several students) implies a poor physical state which does not contribute to its appreciation by other individuals which have not had any contact with it. Sometimes, the very same owners have mixed feeling towards the book: some kind of rejection and affection. The school textbook constitutes a tangible, physical memoir of their school years and school work. Other locations for school textbooks are private collections, universities, educational and research centres or institutions, in particular, pedagogical museums. These last institutions have notably contributed to the preservation and cataloguing of school textbooks in Europe. Private collections usually belong to teachers and researchers. They are not always organized, classified, let alone catalogued. Universities, for their part, frequently have their own documentary archives in the Faculty of Education or Pedagogy, or in their libraries. |
