- The mission of the International Children's Digital Library Foundation (ICDL Foundation) is to support the world's children in becoming effective members of the global community - who exhibit tolerance and respect for diverse cultures, languages and ideas -- by making the best in children's literature available online free of charge. The Foundation pursues its vision by building a digital library of outstanding children's books from around the world and supporting communities of children and adults in exploring and using this literature through innovative technology designed in close partnership with children for children.
About The International Children's Digital Library
The Library is being built by The Internet Archive, which is the largest library of the Internet, and the University of Maryland's Human-Computer Interaction Lab, which is a leader in children's interface design. When the ICDL is completed, it will be a comprehensive library of international children's literature that will be available on the Internet worldwide. In addition, through research conducted using the Library, researchers hope to learn more about how children interact with digital books and how they learn using the related computer technology.According to an International Children's Digital Library media release,
- The non-profit ICDL Foundation’s library has evolved into the world's largest digital collection of children's books. . . With a user interface accessible in 13 different languages, the Web site has had over 1 million unique visitors since its founding and today is visited by more than 75,000 unique visitors monthly from 166 countries.
"The ICDL Foundation's goal is to build a collection of books that represents outstanding historical and contemporary children’s books from throughout the world, and make them freely available on the Internet,” said Timothy Browne, ICDL Executive Director. (12/30/06 ICDL press release).
