Katrina Deliramich
Libr 248
November 6, 2010
Report
3
Children’s Books Online: the Rosetta Project
(http://www.childrensbooksonline.org/) (CHILDREN’S)
International Children’s Digital Library
(http://en.childrenslibrary.org/) (CHILDREN’S)
Recently
I got the chance to revisit some of my favorite books as a child. While
researching children’s books I ran across an author by the name of Maud Hart
Lovelace. She is best known for writing the Betsy-Tacy series and I was curious
if I would be able to find the books with these catalogs. I chose to search
Maud Hart Lovelace for this assignment using Children’s Books Online: the
Rosetta Project (http://www.childrensbooksonline.org/) and
International Children’s Digital Library (http://en.childrenslibrary.org/).
The intended audience for the Children’s Books Online:
Rosetta Project is all the children of the world. The books provided online are
also antique and available for kids of all ages to enjoy and for adults to
discover again. The books are provided in English and other languages but it is
entirely volunteer based so they need translators to bring more books for other
languages. Besides having books divided into categories for early readers
through advanced adult readers there are also interactive books and books that
actually read out loud to the child.
The intended audience for the International Children’s
Digital library is children around the world. The ICDL was founded to provide
superior books in all languages to children from all over the world. Their goal
is to allow children who have moved from their native country access to books
in their native tongue. Although the focus of the catalog is on helping
children succeed and have access to books in their native tongue they also
realize the importance of children learning the language in their new hometown.
Children’s Books
Online has a very simple interface with colorful pictures dispersed throughout.
Comparatively ICDL has a very bright and colorful interface with a lot of
information crammed onto their homepage. Children’s Books Online has a unique
layout because you have to scroll continuously down the page to access the
different areas. ICDL was a strong layout that allows you to easily see the
different areas without scrolling because they are laid out in a column on the
left side of the screen. Both websites provide links to new books added and a
button to go search their library.
I
appreciated the layout of Children’s Books Online because it was very simple
and had colorful antique pictures that were enjoyable to look at. Unfortunately
the homepage was confusing to find the area to search for the library catalog.
I could access the store very easily and could read a lot of fun quotes but it
was difficult to decide where I needed to go. However the new books they have
now were very easily accessible.
ICDL
had a very nice and colorful homepage. The site was very organized and there
was a column on the left that listed specific areas and interests. The top of
the page had a row of the most used links and the right side of the page has
links to the new books they have access to. In the center was information on
events and updates. It was extremely simple to find the catalog and to get
where I needed to go.
Once
I made it to each catalog’s library search page I found searching to be easy
for both sites. The Children’s Books Online allowed you to either go under
categories such as early readers or to go under their search engine. The search
engine provided a list of areas to fill out such as title, author and date. You
did not have to fill out every area, just at least one. ICDL was more
complicated to find the search box but I found it at the bottom of the screen.
They allowed you to do a simple search just providing keywords. I noticed a
link to the left to search under collection as well.
Unfortunately
I was disappointed with Children’s Books Online’s search capabilities. You had
no choice to search by keyword, which made it difficult since I did not know
many author’s names or titles. I just picked a generic “cat” for the title and
they allowed you to chose the Boolean operation you wanted to use. This was a
nice touch. However the results were listed not in alphabetical order or by
publication date. They were just listed in a long column and I was confused on
what the book was about since no summary was provided or author name. Only the
title.
When
searching under ICDL I could only use keywords, which worked well for me. I
chose to use “cat” as well at first and found forty-four results. They showed
the cover of the book with the title underneath. The language of the book was
also provided. I liked this layout much better than Children’s Books Online
because right away I could pick out the books relevant to my needs.
I
next tried to search for Maud Hart Lovelace and the Betsy-Tacy books for each
catalog. Under Children’s Books Online I filled in the author and title. I
found no results. I then tried just searching Betsy in the title but again I
found no results. For ICDL I tried searching the keyword Betsy and got no
results. I then tried Maud and got five results but none were by the correct
author.
Since
my search query did not work for either I decided to go back to using “cat” for
my searches. I narrowed the search under Children’s Books Online to 1990. I
found no results using this date. I was confused and I know the site does
antique books but I could not figure out what their date cutoff was. When I
searched just for cat I could not put the results in any kind of order that
made sense. There must have been a hundred results or more with no order to
them at all. Very difficult to find anything specific.
ICDL
was much easier since once I searched for cat I was able to narrow the results
even farther. Around the search results window that showed the covers of the
books and allowed you to scroll through them, there were all these large
colorful circles. Each circle had a purpose. One was too narrow to short books,
long books, new titles, fairytales and so on. This was fun to click on multiple
circles and see what results were left in my box. Very interactive and great to
sorting and guessing what you want. To turn the simple search into an advanced
search all you needed to do was click on one of several buttons surrounding the
page. You can narrow from age groups to genres but I could not find a laid out
advanced search box or page.
The
overall terminology was extremely straightforward on both sites. The only thing
that could be confusing was on the Children’s Books Online they allowed you to
use a drop down menu of Boolean terms. This would confuse a child and made me
have to stop and think what I wanted to use to get the results I needed.
Finding
help on the Children’s Books Online was very difficult. I could not find a help
button at the bottom of the page or the top. When you searched on the results
page there was no help option either. The ICDL had a very nice help section.
The help button was shown as a question mark at the top of the page. The help
site listed all ways you can search and instructions on how to best search.
They also provided help for other areas of the site including how to read the
site contents and register.
Overall
I liked the ICDL website much better because it was a lot more organized than
Children’s Books Online. I feel they might have had a larger database to choose
from and they seemed more put together. I liked Children’s Books Online if you
were just browsing through the categories and did not need a specific book or
topic. I had a hard time narrowing down my search to find anything specific and
the average user would get fed up with all the guessing. If an adult wanted to
share antique books with their children Children’s Books Online would be a good
website. For any other use and to get the right fit book for languages, age
groups and topics I would recommend ICDL.
The area I liked
most about Children’s Books Online was the access to new books from the
homepage. An image from the book was provided and it was easy to access the
books, right now there were Christmas books available. What I liked most about
ICDL was the ability to choose to narrow your search by pressing on buttons
around the search results. It was fun and fast to try different age groups and
see the results narrowed down in seconds. More interactive then most advanced
searches. What I disliked the most about Children’s Books Online was the
limited results I found and how they were not organized at all. What I disliked
about ICDL was that I had to go to the help section to figure out the different
ways I could search besides the simple and using the buttons. You could also
use subject and keyword or list by author, but it was difficult to figure out.
I think that ICDL would be a great
resource for children at school and at home. I could see teachers helping
children find books in other languages to broaden their horizons. I also think
this would be a good resource to tell parents about who have children learning
new languages or adjusting to a new country. I cannot see the overall benefit
of Children’s Books Online because it was so difficult to use. However if a
child is in need of more books to read in other languages or in their own this
could be a good resource if others have already been exhausted. I would
recommend Children’s Books Online work to make their site more easily
accessible and make their search results listed in some sort of order or give
the searcher a chance to narrow their search results and to view the results
whichever way they choose.
Works
Cited
Children’s Books Online (2004-2010). Retrieved November 4,
2010 from HYPERLINK “http://www.childrensbooksonline.org/”
http://www.childrensbooksonline.org/
International Children’s Digital Library (2010). Retrieved
November 4, 2010 from HYPERLINK “http://en.childrenslibrary.org/”
http://en.childrenslibrary.org/
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