New chapter in online books

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What you don't see in the University of Maryland laboratory that is home to the burgeoning International Children's Digital Library are books. Nothing beyond a few computer instructional manuals, that is.

The books exist online, since the goal of this unusual project is to make available in digital form some of world's best children's literature and have age-appropriate material in as many languages as possible organized under special categories for easy reference.

Another novel concept is having children age 3 to 13 participate in the creation of the library, especially in the design of the Web site (www.ICDLbooks.org). To this end, half a dozen pint-size volunteers known officially as the University of Maryland Kids Team meet over milk or water and cookies for 90 minutes after school twice weekly on the College Park campus. Their reward at year's end is a computer-related present or toy.

Under the direction of Allison Druin, 41, assistant professor in the College of Information Studies, the project is in its third year and is expected to continue indefinitely with funding in the millions of dollars coming from foundations and corporate sponsors.

Some children have been involved since the project's start, others are in their first year. Wanting a balance of age and gender, Ms. Druin initially held an open house. Word-of-mouth drew others and currently there is a waiting list to participate.

The children, whom she refers to as "my short graduate students," meet as equals with the staff in the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory, spending half their working time on Gateway computers. But the lab also has colorful play tables, comfortable chairs and sofas, a whiteboard, marker pens, crayons and plenty of drawing paper.

A life-size stuffed doll named Noobie -- short for "new beast" -- has a computer in its furry belly and is a mascot of sorts. The now-defunct Noobie -- technically, the Noobie Design Playstation -- was part of Ms. Druin's master's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology exploring how technology can be made relevant to the needs of young people. As such, it represents her mission as a researcher.

"Dragging the computer into the children's world and not dragging children into the computer world," she explains.

She already had a degree in graphics from the Rhode Island School of Design and went on to get her doctorate from the College of Education at the University of New Mexico. (Her husband is Ben Bederson, director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab.)

The staff of 15, which includes graduate students from various disciplines, amass book titles through the cooperation of libraries here and abroad, as well as through authors who own their copyright and want their out-of-print books to live on. Early on, the children met with Library of Congress specialists to discuss selection criteria, but most of what they do each week concerns design matters and how best to use the library.