The majority of today’s digital libraries were not created for young children.  To access these libraries, children commonly need to negotiate complex text keyword searches.  Few libraries offer visual browsing of information in addition to querying, so that young children can explore in a less structured way during their learning experience.  In addition, children differ from adults in the way they choose to organize and present their research information once it has been found.  One critical difference is in the way young children collaborate in their reflective inquiry.  Children spend a great deal of their time in classrooms, sharing their technologies, tools, and learning experiences.

To address these important challenges, an interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Maryland has begun to partner with elementary school children (ages 5-10) and teachers to develop a children’s digital library environment containing text, image, audio, and video resources on animals.  While our demonstration project will have rich resources concerning the content area of animals, the technologies we build and the way we use them will not be restricted to that content.  We envision this research leading to children’s digital libraries in the future that offer, for example, resources concerned with astronomy, American history, or environmental sciences.

The project research focuses on seven goals: 1) To understand the unique needs of children in learning environments; 2) To develop new visualization techniques for use in children’s digital libraries; 3) To develop new collaboration tools for multiple co-located users of digital libraries; 4) To develop new presentation tools for digital libraries users; 5) To understand the impact a digital library environment can have on children as researchers and learners; 6) To create support materials and inservice training opportunities for teachers to develop engagement activities that make use of the digital library environment; 7) To formulate and evaluate new research methods for developing children’s digital libraries technologies.

This human-centered research is concerned with four main areas of implementation: querying, browsing, organization and presentation.  In each of these four areas, information visualization, collaboration technologies, and impact on children’s learning experiences will be considered.  Throughout the research process, diverse points of view and a wide range of experience will be commonplace thanks to our use of intergenerational, interdisciplinary research teams.  We believe it is critical to the research process that professionals from various disciplines (e.g., computer science, education, biology, etc.) collaborate with children.  Each professional and child has important expertise and points of view that should be heard during the research process.  Not only will we examine how children can have an impact on the design and development of children’s digital libraries, but we will also look to understand how these new technologies can have an impact on children as learners.