The International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL) Foundation has the world’s largest collection of children’s literature from around the world available freely on the Internet. The ICDL concept (www.childrenslibrary.org) was established by the University of Maryland. The digital library provides free access in 10 languages including Arabic, Chinese, English, Filipino/Tagalog, French, German, Hebrew, Persian/Farsi, Portuguese and Spanish, to children’s books in 32 languages.
The ICDL is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Faculty, staff and students from the University of Maryland’s Human-Computer Interaction Lab (www.cs.umd.edu/hcil), the UMD Department of Computer Science (www.cs.umd.edu) and the UMD College of Information Studies (www.clis.umd.edu) research and maintain the library software and collection.
The materials included in the collection reflect the similarities and differences in cultures, societies, interests, lifestyles and priorities of peoples around the world. The collection’s focus is on identifying materials that help children to understand the world around them and the global society in which they live. It is hoped that through a greater understanding of one another that tolerance and acceptance may be achieved.
The collection has two primary audiences. The first audience is children ages 3-13, as well as librarians, teachers, parents and caregivers who work with children of these ages. The second audience is international scholars and researchers in the area of children’s literature.
Registered and unregistered users can use the ICDL Library. Registering and opening a library account is free of charge and has many advantages. By signing up for a “myICDL Account,” users can not only select language preferences, they can customize their personal bookshelves. The bookshelf feature allows registered users to save all their personal favorite ICDL books in one place. This provides a great way for teachers to create classroom profiles and select specific books for their classroom bookshelves that they want their students to read. Books saved on a personal bookshelf also have virtual bookmarks. The bookshelf remembers the last page a user read in each book on the shelf. Users can further customize their accounts with fun themes based on monsters that guard their bookshelves.
Ultimately, ICDL hopes to provide access to 10,000 children’s books, drawn from 100 different languages. To build a collection this broad, it is critical to have the necessary resources. As large as the library is already, there are still many countries that are underrepresented. For example, in the Middle East collection, there are many more books in Farsi than in Arabic. The costs of securing and digitizing some collections are surprisingly high. The ICDL welcomes the contribution of funds specifically targeted at bringing in books from a specified country. If you would like to be sure that your favorite country’s children’s literature is properly represented, please consider donating to this truly global effort. See details at http://www.childrenslibrary.org./contribute/becomesponsor.shtml.
The ICDL relies on the international participation of publishers, authors and illustrators to ensure that its collection remains as diverse as possible. Authors, publishers or illustrators interested in making their books available in the ICDL can access a step-by-step guide through the website. ICDL Director of Collection Development, Dr. Ann Weeks, just returned from Egypt where Farida El-Wakil Reedy, secretary-general of the Integrated Care Society, sponsored meetings focused on increasing the number of books in Arabic in the ICDL. While in Egypt, Dr. Weeks also met with the directors of the Children’s Library and the Young People’s Library at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina about expanding cooperative projects between the Library and the ICDL.
The ICDL depends upon a network of individuals who volunteer their time to translate the ICDL web interface, bibliographic information about the books, author biographies and other documents into various languages. ICDL welcomes speakers of all languages, but they are especially in need of translators for some languages including Arabic. Please click to http://www.childrenslibrary.org./contribute/translate.shtml to donate your time and talent.