Children’s Interests and Concerns when using the International Children’s Digital Library: A Four Country Case Study
by A Druin, A Weeks, S. Massey, B. Bederson (January 2007)
From the abstract:

This paper presents a case study of 12 children who used the International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL) over four years and live in one of four countries: Germany, Honduras, New Zealand, and the United States. By conducting interviews and classroom observations, along with collecting drawings, book reviews, and work samples, this study describes how these children were interested in books, libraries, technology and the world around them. Findings from this study include: these young people increased the variety of books they read online; still preferred physical interactions with books for reading, but appreciated the searching tools online; still valued their physical libraries as spaces for social interaction and reading; showed increased reading motivation; and showed interest in exploring different cultures.

Source: HCIL (Univ. of Maryland)

and on a related note from Gary:
We’re big fans of what they’re building at the International Children’s Digital Library and the work they do. The scanning and presentation is beautiful and the search UI is fun, useful, and very kid-friendly. The ICDL is truly a site for everyone and is deserving of all the attention it can get.

That’s why I was happy to help the Ask.com Smart Answer team create a Smart Answer just for the ICDL. It’s visible at the top of various results pages (based on your query). The Smart Answer offers a bit of background about the digital library but more importantly provides direct links to the UI, account registration, and more. Here’s another search that triggered the ICDL Smart Answer.

Gary is Director of Online Information Resources at Ask.com

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 and is filed under Databases, Directories, and Guides, Search Tools, Web Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.