Children's Input is Vital to Creating an Online Library that meets Children's Information Needs. A review of: Druin, Allison. “What Children Can Teach Us: Developing Digital Libraries for Children with Children.” The Library Quarterly 75.1 (January 2005): 20‐41.

• Main Author: Susan Haigh
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Alberta 2006-03-01
• Series: Evidence Based Library and Information Practice
• Subjects: Information Needs; Digital Libraries; Children; Collaboration; Design
• Online Access: http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP/article/view/25/67

<b>Objective</b> - Through use of an interdisciplinary research team that included children, the study aimed to demonstate that including children in the design of a digital library for children would result in some new approaches that would improve the site's usability for the target user group. <br><b>Design</b> - Case study. <br><b>Setting</b> - The research was conducted at University of Maryland over a four-year perioe and involved an interdisciplinary research team of adult researchers from information studies, computer science, education, art, and psychology as well as seven children aged 7-11. <br><b>Subjects</b> - Seven children participated in the design team over two years; 153 children were obeserved and interviewed in the design phase; and the resulting new approaches were validated post-launch by analysis of International Children's Digital Library (ICDL) (http://www.icdlbooks.org) users and usage patterns from November 2002- November 2003 (over 90, 000 unique users and 19, 000 optional questionnaire respondents). <br><b>Method</b> - The study included seven children in the design team for a digital library of international children's books, which resulted in new approaches to collection development, cataloguing and the search interface. In the design phase, research methods involving the seven children included brainstorming techniques, "cooperative inquiry", low tech prototyping; and lab use studies. The team also undertook observation and interviews of 153 children engaged in searching and selecting books from public library catalogues. In validating the new approaches that resulted from the design research, the team employed web log analysis, a voluntary online survey, and working with children in local schools to understand their use of ICDL. <br><b>Main result</b> - The inclusion of children's viewpoints in the design stage of ICDL had an impact in three areas: collection development, metadata, and interface design. For collection development, the research showed that kids were interested in books about children from other cultures and other times in history; in animals, both real and make-believe; in books that are sensitive to other cultures; and in books that are in good condition. For metadata, the research showed that children do not distinguish 'fiction' and 'nonfiction'; look for 'scary stuff' or 'gross stuff'; are often seeking books that make them feel a certain way; care about the look of book covers and may recall books by jacket colours; and use free vocabulary like 'princesses' and 'jokes'. For interface design, the children's involvement led to more search options (utilizing the new categories of metadata that were created), and customization options such as ability to choose different forms and colour palettes for book readers (e.g. the comic book reader, the spiral book reader). Web log and survey data, as well as lab tests, showed that the innovations resulting from the children's design input were used. Of the over 90, 000 uniques users who visied the site in the first year, "genre" and "color" were statistically the fourth and fifth most popular search categories. In lab tests, girls used "color" twice as often as boys, and older boys preferred "genre" while younger children did not pay attention to that category. <br><b>Conclusions</b> - A first conclusion is that children's input is vital to creating an online library that meets children's information needs, tendencies and preferences.