ICADL 2007 - LNCS 4822

BrowsReader: A System for Realizing a New Children’s Reading Environment in a Library

Jia Liu, Makoto Nakashima, and Tetsuro Ito

Dept. of Computer Science and Intelligent Systems, Oita University, 700 Dannoharu, Oita-shi, Oita 870-1192, Japan
wenyao@csis.oita-u.ac.jp
nakasima@csis.oita-u.ac.jp
ito@csis.oita-u.ac.jp

Abstract. This paper proposes a system for realizing a new children’s reading environment in a library. Conventional libraries establish children’s rooms for supporting children’s activities of reading printed picture books. The collections there, however, are often biased in content and limited in number, and children are usually not satisfied with them. When the entire collection becomes large, it occurs that younger children cannot effectively search that collection. Similar search problems also exist in children’s digital libraries. We have designed a system called BrowsReader with the purpose of realizing a new environment, where children can browse in a large virtual bookshelf and can easily find the digitized and/or printed picture books that they are interested in. A user study was conducted to test the effectiveness of the system.

Keywords: Children’s digital reading room, children’s digital library, picture books, browsing interface

LNCS 4822, p. 361 ff.

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