User Interfaces in Children's Digital Libraries: Proposing an Optimum Model for Iranian Children

This survey aims to analyze the interfaces of children’s digital libraries and to present their most important content features. Forty children's digital libraries were identified using different keywords in Google and Yahoo search engines. Then a checklist was prepared based on all features of these libraries and it was presented to Iranian experts. The experts were members of the "Children’s Book Council" and also librarians of the “Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults.” Combining the views of experts and considering the frequency of the two choices “important” and “very important,” the significant features were identified. These features were those that more than 70% of experts had marked as “important” or “very important”. The fifty six most important content features were selected and divided into seven general groups which were later subdivided into smaller categories. The designers of English children’s digital libraries have not paid much attention to content features and one of the reasons for this may be the variety of information that each library can place in its website. Comparing content features in children’s digital libraries with the opinions of experts shows that the low frequency of some of these features is not due to their unimportance; perhaps the change in the information environment and the advent of digital libraries has introduced new features and concepts and since they are novel, some of these features may have occurred in fewer libraries.