BrowsReader: A system for realizing a new children's reading environment in a library

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 Brows-Reader 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. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.