home

= [|International Children's Digital Library] = = //--a digital library of children's books from around the world// =

Description
The International Children’s Digital Library is a digital collection of children’s books from around the world developed by researchers at the University of Maryland. The mission of the ICDL is “to support the world's children in becoming effective members of the global community - who exhibit tolerance and respect for diverse cultures, languages and ideas -- by making the best in children's literature available online free of charge." The ultimate goal of the foundation is to collect and make available over ten thousand books for children aged 3 to 13 from many different countries in over one hundred different languages. These books are available to anyone with internet access. Within this collection, users can find books that explore themes of diversity and cultural awareness.

As a Web 2.0 tool, this resource encourages user participation, as users can interact with the collection in many different ways. Users can create an account, which allows them to choose books to keep on a virtual bookshelf. They can also suggest books to be featured. Some users send in suggestions for activities related to books in the collection. Also, people who wish to volunteer with the ICDL can help identify books and secure rights.The website also connects to a forum for people to share questions and other activities. Researchers have also explored creating ICDL Communities, enabling "children's communities to develop around the collection." Finally, with the free iPhone app, StoryKit, children can modify or create and share stories online.


 * Focus of Collection: The themes that the books in this collection explore help to promote cultural awareness and understanding for future generations.
 * Multitude of Languages: With books from many different languages, this collection is a resource for teachers or others who work with students who speak different languages. These books can help bridge the gap for some students who do not feel represented in the classroom. Some of the books are even offered in more than one language. This feature is also good for students who are learning another language.
 * Heritage: Children who wish to explore their cultural heritage can explore books on this website.
 * Free: The ICDL website provides books that are free to anyone with internet access.
 * Copyright Policy: The website has a clear policy about copyright. They use books from the public domain, or they secure the rights to share them on the internet.
 * Large Print: Each book has the option of making the text bigger.
 * Account: The website allows users to save books to a virtual bookshelf.
 * Search: Users can search using one of several search methods and can search by many different features (e.g., age, color of cover, language, country, type of book, animal characters), giving users the flexibility to choose the method that works best for them.
 * Mobility: The ICDL is accessible from an iPhone with the free ICDL app, and StoryKit allows for mobile story creation and editing (of even some books from the collection).


 * The collection is not very large, but it is still growing.
 * Currently, there are many more books in the library in English than in other languages.
 * A large portion of the books are from the public domain, so the collection is a bit dated.
 * The ICDL Communities feature discussed on the site seems as if it is not a functional feature at this time, and it is this piece that would make the site a great Web 2.0 tool.
 * Some users may find a portion of the books difficult to read.
 * Even with the larger print, some may find the text to be too small.
 * Without a projector, it would be difficult to show the illustrations to groups of students.
 * The StoryKit app is only available for the iPhone.

Special Features

 * A Book of the Day is featured on the homepage, and users can embed the Book of the Day widget on their own websites or blogs.
 * Users can create an account and save books to their personal bookshelf.
 * Users can access the website in several different languages.
 * There is an initiative to translate the books in the collection to make them accessible to more readers.
 * The development team consists of both adults and children.
 * Users can suggest featured books or activities.
 * There is a gift shop for users who want to purchase merchandise.

Similar Web 2.0 tools

 * [|The Center for Digital Story Telling] is a foundation that helps people around the world use media to share their personal narratives. This website is similar because people around the world are sharing this content for others to see and use.
 * [|Magic Keys] offers a small collection of children’s stories for people to share.
 * [|The Children's Library at the Internet Archive] offers a large collection of children's literature from around the world, including items in the ICDL.
 * [|Storybird] is a site that enables collaborative storytelling, much like StoryKit at the ICDL.

The following link documents two learning activities which use the International Children's Digital Library as a Web 2.0 resource in the classroom. The first lesson follows several standards of the New York State Languages Other than English curriculum. In this lesson, high school students in a Spanish language class will utilize the ICDL to find Spanish folk tales, which they will use to enrich their language education. The second lesson follows a fourth or fifth grade class as they study new countries in their geography class. This lesson addresses standards from both the Geography and English Language Arts curriculum for elementary students.

**Tutorial** In this tutorial, we describe the purpose and features of the International Children's Digital Library, and we provide an overview of searching for and reading books in the collection. media type="custom" key="8124532"