The IBE Documentation Centre has a rich but yet undocumented collection of textbooks, teacher manuals and other learning materials on different subjects and disciplines published between the early 1800s and the 1980s in more than 110 countries. An IBE team started to explore this collection during the summer 2012, and so far a total of approximately 18,000 textbooks, teacher manuals and other materials are unveiled.
Textbooks from 1900 to the 1940s
Almost 1,500 textbooks including teacher manuals and other materials from 60 countries published between 1900 and the 1940s were found and have been organized by title, country, publication year, subject, and language. These textbooks cover various areas, including history, civics, social studies, geography, literature, language, music, biology and religion, and have a wide international scope. Besides countries in Europe, such as France, Germany, and United Kingdom, and the United States, many textbooks are from countries in Asia and the Pacific, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe. A potential partnership between the International Bureau of Education and Stanford University is being explored to analyze these textbooks published between 1900 and 1945.
The IBE also seeks funding to digitalize and catalogue this important collection in order to preserve it and make it available to researchers, practitioners and the wider public.