Australian Children's Folklore Collection

The Australian Children's Folklore Collection (ACFC), housed in the Museum of Victoria, is Australia's only public archive of children's folklore. It contains games, rhymes, jokes, riddles, superstitions and other kinds of child lore from the 1940s to the present. The collection includes photographs, audio and video tapes, documents, drawings, play artefacts and over 10,000 card files. It contains specialist collections of children's lore, including the Dorothy Howard Collection and children's Museum Collection. The ACFC is used for research purposes by scholars from a variety of disciplines and by writers, journalists and others interested in childhood and folklore. It is a 'living' archive - it continues to grow and is open to the public. The Australian Children's Folklore Collection is an archive, it does not have a display space.

Address: 
Museum of Victoria, 328 Swanston Street Walk, Melbourne, VIC
Tel: 
0392912179
Hours: 
Monday - Friday 9:00am - 5:00pm. Closed between 1:00pm - 2:00pm.
Admission: 
Free
Facilities: 
Brochure
Collection: 
More than 10,000 card files

Subject:

Items

Play artefacts

Children's playthings

Creator:
Home-made and manufactured
Description:
Children's playthings from a variety of countries and cultures.
Date:
1900s - current

Collection

Dorothy Mills Howard Collection

Creator:
Dorothy Mills Howard
Description:
Research documentation from 1954-55, recording Australian children's folklore from Queensland, Western Australia, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, and the Australian Capital Territory. Includes photographs.
Date:
1870s-1955

Children's museum collection

Description:
Descriptions of games, rhymes etc. collected from visitors to the Children's Museum's exhibition in the Museum of Victoria.
Date:
1988-93
Item Id Number:
series 8

Cassette series

Multicultural cassette series

Creator:
Gwenda Davey
Description:
Forty audio cassettes of field recordings of adults singing and reciting rhymes, songs, lullabies etc., in nine community languages; English, Arabic, Dutch, Greek, Italian, Macedonian, Serbian, Croation, Slovenian, Spanish, and Turkish.
Date:
1976-77
Item Id Number:
Series 2