Fresno State is committed to rebuilding Arne Nixon Center’s staffing, services, programs | Opinion

The Arne Nixon Center for the Study of Children’s Literature at California State University, Fresno stands as a testament to our commitment to fostering literacy, imagination and scholarship. Recently, concerns were raised about the university’s support for the center, and we welcome the opportunity to address those questions directly.

With a renewed focus on the Arne Nixon Center’s educational mission, we are excited to share updates on current initiatives and plans for the future that are designed to engage scholars, students and supporters of children’s literature in meaningful ways.

The Arne Nixon Center is an internationally renowned research center that supports the discovery, learning and research of children’s literature. Prior to the founding of the center, Arne Nixon taught children’s literature and storytelling at Fresno State for more than 30 years.

Nixon’s original collection of 22,000 books established his vision for acquiring international and multicultural stories from across the world. The center now holds 11 distinctive collections, including the LGBTQ Collection, one of the largest groupings of children’s and young adult literature by and about LGBTQ people in the nation, as well as the World Languages Collection, which includes many Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, German and Finnish titles.

The center also houses rare and unique archives, including the works of Alma Flor Ada, Aliki, Margarita Engle and Robert San Souci, as well as Nixon’s own papers, which provide a personal perspective on his life, teaching career and aspirations for children’s literature.

Future planning

The center put on two public programs in the fall of 2024, including a screening of “Butterfly in the Sky: The Reading Rainbow Story.” Moving forward, we have ambitious plans for 2025: We are planning additional programming for the spring, including an exhibition and accompanying programming honoring Nixon’s life and legacy.

We will also meet with the Arne Nixon Center governing board to develop longer-term plans. Our efforts will focus on stabilizing our finances, including fundraising and advocating for additional state support; increasing our programming and supporting Fresno State academic programs that involve children’s literature and primary source research; and re-engaging the center’s long-time supporters and increasing outreach to the children’s literature community in and beyond Fresno.

Current challenges

The center’s biggest current challenge is lack of funding. While the center was founded with a generous endowment, that endowment is not intended to pay for permanent staff. This means we must rely on state funding for staff, and the CSU-wide budget crisis has restricted that funding significantly.

After a period without dedicated staff, a part-time librarian for the center (co-author Karina Cardenas) was hired last July. Cardenas is passionate about children’s literature and special collections, especially the center’s rich collections of multicultural literature and papers from authors and illustrators. And a new dean of library services (co-author Janet Crum) was hired last August. Crum also has a deep connection to children’s literature and began her career in libraries as a young teen by volunteering in the children’s department at the public library in Tracy.

Together, we are committed to rebuilding the staffing, services and programming of the Arne Nixon Center. We recognize that the current level of staffing is inadequate to fully support the center’s mission, but we are still able to make its valuable collections available to students and scholars, to collaborate with Fresno State faculty to include center resources in their courses, and to provide engaging programming for children’s literature enthusiasts within and beyond Fresno State.

We both believe that children’s literature changes lives, and we are proud of the work we have done in a few short months to reinvigorate the Arne Nixon Center. If you are interested in children’s literature, we would love to have you visit us and participate in our programs.