The International Children's Digital Library (ICDL) began as a demonstration project and was then funded as a five year grant by the National Science Foundation and the Institute for Museum and Library Services to provide a fully digitized library of international children's books. The concept of the ICDL developed from an interdisciplinary project at the University of Maryland and in collaboration with the Internet Archive. The goal has been to provide digitized books that “reflect the differences in culture, societies, interests, and lifestyles of peoples around the world” (Collection Development Policy http://en.childrenslibrary.org/about/collection.shtml).
The ICDL has set a target number of digitizing 10,000 books in 100 languages. Currently they have digitized 4,463 books in 55 languages. These books are either out of copyright restrictions or have received digitization permission from the copyright holder. While digitizing children's books in a high quality setting is an ambitious project, the ICDL has also developed several research projects that are noteworthy. Examples of some of these include the Kidstream programme, where children are part of the design team for developing educational technology and another programme is the Children's Digital Hospital Program, which is exploring the possibility of a library on wheels for children's hospitals. While these are exciting programmes at ICDL, this review is focused on the digital children's book collections of ICDL and the issues regarding the usefulness of the site.
The International Children's Digital Library website was easily viewed using the latest versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer and Chrome. There is an app for the iPhone and iPad and the books can simply be downloaded to the Barnes & Noble Color Nook. The homepage for ICDL is a busy site but there is a distinctive target in the middle of the page that says Read Books! This takes the user directly to a colourful search page. The icons link to several different parameters including age groups; length of books; award winners; characters, picture books and book covers by colour. One can click on one icon or combine several in an automatic Boolean search that is performed for the user. For example, a patron can click on one of the age limiting icons, Ten to Thirteen and the total number of books appropriate to that age group is shown. Then the patron can refine the search by clicking on another icon, for example, Award Winning Books. The search is repeated and the search is completed very quickly. One can also limit to a single language. The search is so easily performed by using these visual icons that a librarian or teacher does not need to have a long discussion of Boolean operators. There is a keyword search box at the very bottom of the page and a patron can add an icon to the search. The icons for book covers by colour are fun parameters because some patrons often remember the colour of the cover but not the exact title of a children's book. But in a digitized environment is that a necessary tool? If so, perhaps those icons would be better placed at the bottom or side of the web page.
The display of the books is very clear. When a title is selected a brief record appears with bibliographic information; a very brief summary and sometimes the book record will have children's reviews of the book. The patron can create a free account and put the books being read in the account. This is allows readers to bookmark and later return to the last page that they were reading.
The simple search was so easily interactive and fast, that the advanced search may be forgotten, but that would be a mistake. The advanced search is also quite fast and offers the patron several options. It gives the searcher an opportunity to investigate how the books are cataloged and indexed. As a teacher or librarian, this would be an excellent place to investigate what types of books constitute the ICDL. Each page has a help button that gives details on successful searching.
Once a book has been selected the screen reader has the capability of showing one or two pages at a time. There are Zoom In and Zoom Out icons that allow for easier reading. The pages are crisp and the drawings are quite vivid. The books were viewed not only on a workstation computer but also projected onto a screen in one of the San Jose State University library's instructional classrooms. There was no loss of colour or diminished reading capabilities. I tried the projection screen to see how this display would work from a suggestion of the ICDL team. The team, in their Using the Library page, suggested that teachers and librarians could set up the books for projection during story time. The homepage has so many great ideas about using ICDL and the team has developed an excellent teacher's manual with a template for activities using the ICDL books. There are several links to presentations and papers concerning the ICDL project that describe the mission and accomplishments of this worthwhile endeavour.
Although the International Children's Digital Library is not at its goal of 10,000 books, the ICDL Foundation has achieved its first goal of providing free access to the children's literature that exemplifies respect for diverse cultures. This is a highly recommended resource for public, school and academic libraries.
