PiCoBoo database

The PiCoBoo project addressed 19th-century European picturebooks printed in colour for children and assessed their significance as a catalyst for major cultural and social changes. It provided the first detailed account of when, where and how these books were made, of who produced them and for what audiences; it analysed what their long-term influence was, across national boundaries, and placed them in larger cultural, publishing and visual histories.

The PiCoBoo database has made accessible a large corpus of picturebooks, dispersed across countries and institutions, only partially retrievable through local catalogues, not always correctly described and in a not-uniformed way. Working with network organisations, it has been possible to define cataloguing standards and establish agreed practices for describing children’s picturebooks, thus providing a framework for understanding them.