Assessing aesthetic relevance: Children's book ... - Semantic Scholar

Assessing Aesthetic Relevance: Children’s Book Selection in a Digital Library

Kara Reuter Worthington Libraries, 820 High Street, Worthington, OH 43085. E-mail: [email protected]

Recreational reading among young people is reportedly on the decline in the United States. Some researchers have suggested that supporting children’s strategies for book selection is crucial to encouraging children to engage with books, indicating that improving these strategies might increase the amount of reading they do. In response, this study explores how elementary-school children select books for recreational reading using a digital library. The work extends traditional models of relevance assessment with reader-response theory, employing the concept of “aesthetic relevance”: the potential of a document to provide a suitable reading experience. Individuals define aesthetic relevance in personal terms and apply it as they assess documents, much as they do in traditional relevance assessment. This study identified a total of 46 factors organized along seven dimensions that influence children’s assessment of the aesthetic relevance of books during selection. The analysis yielded differences in the prevalence of the aestheticrelevance factors that children mention at various stages of book selection. In addition, the children exhibited differences by age and subtle differences by gender in the frequency of mention of various aesthetic-relevance factors. Recommendations drawn from the findings are offered to improve systems design and literacy education in order to enhance children’s access to books and to promote recreational reading.

Introduction National studies in the United States indicate that reading for pleasure is in decline, especially among young adults (National Endowment for the Arts, 2004) and children (National Center for Education Statistics, 1999, 2001). When it comes to young people’s recreational reading, many literacy researchers theorize that poor literacy achievement and low motivation might stem from an inability to select the right book, arguing therefore that book selection strategies are a part of successful literacy development (Carter, 2000; Hunt, 1996/1997; Krashen, 2004; Ross, McKechnie, & Rothbauer,

Received August 22, 2006; revised January 6, 2007; accepted January 7, 2007

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© 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Published online 17 August 2007 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/asi.20657

2006). Indeed, one researcher, a first-grade teacher, reported that her students said that “choosing the books was the hardest part of learning to read” (Timion, 1992, p. 204). In the past three decades, only three major empirical studies in library and information science (LIS) have focused on the selection of books for pleasure reading. In an extensive survey of British adults, Spiller (1980) found that browsing for books is “an almost instinctive activity” (p. 248) and that people have deeply personal reasons for their book preferences. More recently, Ross (1999) conducted open-ended interviews with Canadian adults about their book-selection behavior, finding that avid readers have “well-developed heuristics” (p. 797) for selecting books, focusing especially on mood as the “bedrock for choice” (p. 790). As part of work on a design specification of a fiction-retrieval system for children, Pejtersen (1986) analyzed Danish children’s negotiations with librarians when selecting books, finding that children’s requests focused particularly on the accessibility and emotional experiences of books. Twenty years later, Pejtersen’s study remains the only major LIS study to have examined children’s book selection for recreational reading. Instead, LIS research has focused overwhelmingly on information seeking and retrieval in academic and professional settings (McKechnie, Baker, Greenwood, & Julien, 2002) rather than in the context of everyday life and recreational activities. This research focus, however, lies outside the ways in which many people use libraries: surveys of public-library users indicate that people perceive publiclibraries primarily as leisure resources rather than as “scholarly” ones. Two studies have revealed that 87% of adults viewed the library as a source of entertainment, 42% used the library for the purpose of hobbies or enjoyment, and 50% borrowed books (Vavrek, 2000, 2001). According to Vavrek (2000), these results suggest that the library is considered “a place where people borrow books and seek to entertain themselves” (p. 62). Similarly, early surveys of Web users indicated that entertainment was the number one use of the Web for young people (GVU Center, 1997, 1998a, 1998b). More recent surveys have shown that more than 80% of young adults go online “just for fun” and that recreational use of the Web is growing

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, 58(12):1745–1763, 2007

the fastest among young users (Lenhart, Madden, & Hitlin, 2005; Madden & Rainie, 2003). Ferguson and Perse (2000) posited that the Web represents a functional alternative to television, finding that among undergraduates, entertainment was the strongest motive in Web searches, aside from required academic activities. Indeed, according to one survey, 18 of the top 20 Web sites among college students are entertainment-related (Rainie, Kalehoff, & Hess, 2002). In a comparison of young people’s perceptions of the Internet and CD-ROMs as information resources, one teenager expressly noted that he considered the Internet a leisure resource (Shenton & Dixon, 2003). Curiously, however, little LIS research has actually addressed information behavior in leisure contexts. Perhaps this omission stems from the early decades of the 20th century, when pleasure reading was deemed frivolous and morally suspect and the provision of fiction by libraries ran counter to their objective to be educational and “improving” (Hayes, 1992; Ranta, 1991; Ross, 1991; Walker, 1958). Remnants of this bias might exist in the current lack of scholarly attention to the study of information seeking for entertainment (Case, 2002), resulting in unexplored territory—what Hartel (2003) has recently termed the “leisure frontier.” Furthermore, current information resources often fail to support the range of people’s wants and needs. For example, in her work examining adults’ leisure reading habits, Ross (1999) observed that “library catalogues and indexing systems are ill adapted to the task of helping readers find books they will enjoy” (p. 788). Against this backdrop, this study focuses on children’s book selection while they use the International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL). The analysis examines book selection for recreational reading as a process of relevance assessment that centers on the concept of aesthetic relevance. In addition to providing a better understanding of the processes children use to select books, the findings of this study suggest ways to extend traditional models of information behavior and relevance assessment, to improve the design of systems to support book selection, and to enhance literacy education to promote recreational reading.

Related Literature Reading Interests and Preferences Although both LIS and literacy researchers have long studied children’s reading habits, only a basic understanding of children’s book selection has been achieved. Sebesta and Monson (2003) summarized a longstanding body of research that seeks to identify the kinds of books or reading materials that are most popular with children. Several other studies have examined how children choose books, especially by focusing on the factors that influence children’s selection and identifying what kinds of books are popular with them. Several studies found that physical characteristics play a central role in book selection among children (Campbell, Griswold, & Smith, 1988; Fleener, Morrison, Linek, & Rasinski, 1997; Kragler & Nolley, 1996; Pejtersen, 1986; Reutzel 1746

& Gali, 1997); other studies found that children look for emotional responses and personal connections when choosing books (Carter & Harris, 1982; Moss & Hendershot, 2002; Pejtersen, 1986; Rinehart, Garlach, & Wisell, 1998; Samuels, 1989; Swartz & Hendricks, 2000). Studies have also noted differences in book selection attributed to age, gender, achievement level, and other characteristics (Anderson, Higgins, & Wurster, 1985; Boraks, Hoffman, & Bauer, 1997; Childress, 1985; Fisher, 1988; Greenlaw, 1983; Harkrader & Moore, 1997; Simpson, 1996; Worthy, Moorman, & Turner, 1999). Some findings suggest that younger children are less likely to take note of generic distinctions, such as fiction versus nonfiction (Cooper, 2002), while older children tend to focus on genre (Fleener et al., 1997). While studies with elementary school students have found that younger children focus on the level of difficulty of their selections (Kragler & Nolley, 1996; Lewis, 1989; Robinson, Larsen, Haupt, & Mohlman, 1997; Timion, 1992), studies with middle- and high-school students have found that older children rely heavily on book summaries when choosing books (Fleener et al., 1997; Rinehart et al., 1998; Swartz & Hendricks, 2000). Findings also suggest that reading interests and preferences evolve with age, with younger children preferring fairy tales and older children becoming interested in realistic fiction (Boraks et al., 1997; Fisher, 1988). Researchers have also reported different interests and preferences for reading material among children based on gender, with girls overwhelmingly preferring narrative fiction and boys preferring nonfiction (Childress, 1985; Harkrader & Moore, 1997; Simpson, 1996). Taken together, the literature on reading interests and preferences suggests that book selection is a complex process with many factors at work. However, findings from these studies have been based largely on surveys or questionnaires (Boraks et al., 1997; Fisher, 1988; Harkrader & Moore, 1997; Worthy et al., 1999) or on circulation records (Childress, 1985) rather than on actual observation of children’s book-selection behavior. In addition, researchers have tended to focus on single aspects of books such as genre when classifying children’s selections, rather than examining an array of factors. As Purves and Beach (1972) observed, findings based on such a narrow focus might be misleading. Although a researcher might classify a child’s selection as nonfiction or a fairy tale, the child might have chosen a title not because of genre but because of the length of the book, the presence of illustrations, or the appearance of the book’s cover. Overall, the research on reading interests and preferences does not adequately describe the range of factors that influence children’s book selection. Relevance As a model of the process of document selection, relevance assessment offers a starting place for understanding the process of selecting books for leisure reading. Although early, systems-oriented perspectives on relevance focused on logical or topical relationships between a user’s query

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY—October 2007 DOI: 10.1002/asi

and a document’s subject (e.g., Cooper, 1971; Wilson, 1973), current user-centered notions of relevance focus on the situational, cognitive, and dynamic aspects of the process of relevance judgment (e.g., Park, 1994; Schamber, Eisenberg, & Nilan, 1990; Wang & Soergel, 1998; Wang & White, 1999). Previous studies of relevance identified dozens of criteria employed in document selection in a variety of contexts by different populations (Barry, 1994; Lawley, Soergel, & Huang, 2005; Park, 1993; Schamber, 1991; Tang & Solomon, 1998; Wang & Soergel, 1998; Wang & White, 1999), including children (Bilal, 2000; Hirsh, 1999). Barry and Schamber (1998) identified several common kinds of relevance criteria (such as accuracy and clarity) that apply across situations and suggested that there may be a finite range of relevance criteria. Although many recent studies and discussions of relevance have acknowledged the social and affective dimensions at work in selection (Barry & Schamber, 1998; Cosijn & Ingwersen, 2000; Saracevic, 1996; Schamber et al., 1990; Wang & Soergel, 1998; Wang & White, 1999), these dimensions have rarely been observed in the academic and professional settings of most relevance studies and, thus, are underdeveloped in research and theory (Julien, McKechnie, & Hart, 2005). For instance, Wang and Soergel (1998) found that academics based very few of their document-selection decisions on social or emotional values during a research project. Instead, the overwhelming majority of decisions related to the perceived epistemic or functional values of documents. In the realm of leisure reading, however, affective factors are on par with cognitive ones. In work on indexing for the humanities, Green (1997) explored the nature of relevance within literary writing: In this context literature is relevant to readers because it touches something deep within them, because it makes them think and feel as only humans are known to think and feel, because it leads readers to relate to writers as if somehow we humans can actually come to know each other through writing and reading (p. 74).

Within this context, Green (1997) introduced the concept of “aesthetic relevance,” in which “the desire for certain types of aesthetic experiences—whether calm and soothing, or emotionally invigorating, or warmly sensitive” (p. 75, emphasis added) underlies how readers engage with literature during the selection process. As Green noted, very little is known about how individuals actually assess aesthetic relevance. To date, the research focus on information behavior in academic and professional contexts, especially in order to complete research tasks, has emphasized only the cognitive aspects of relevance assessment. Reader Response As with the shift from a system-oriented to a user-centered approach in relevance research in LIS, approaches to literary

studies have shifted from an emphasis on the authority of the text to a focus on the reader (Benton, 1999; Sipe, 1999). In seminal work on reader response, Rosenblatt (1994) described the process of reading as a transaction between the reader and the text in which “interest, expectations, anxieties and other factors based on past experience” (p. 19) shape an individual’s perception of a text. The reader-response paradigm highlights the influence of the personal and social contexts of reading on how readers construct meaning from texts (Probst, 2003). Some studies with children and young adults have analyzed response patterns to look for connections between certain kinds of responses and individual characteristics—finding, for instance, that younger children respond differently to texts than older children (Martinez & Roser, 2003). Younger children’s responses tend to focus on plot and physical actions in stories, while older children’s responses focus on interpretation and thematic meanings (Applebee, 1978; Beach & Wendler, 1987; Galda, 1990; Hickman, 1981; Lehr, 1988). These kinds of findings have been used primarily to provide insight into literacy development, and to undergird strategies for supporting children’s responses to literature in the classroom (Purves, Rogers, & Soter, 1995). Much reader-response research has focused on investigating what Rosenblatt (1994) refers to as “efferent reading,” that is, reading that is undertaken for instrumental purposes and directed outward to some goal outside the text, such as acquiring information or solving a problem. In efferent reading—the term was coined by Rosenblatt from the Latin “to carry away”—the reader is interested only indirectly in a text’s concepts or ideas in themselves and focuses instead on their usefulness, apart from and after the act of reading. In contrast, “aesthetic reading” is a self-contained and innerdirected activity in which the reader experiences a text directly. The focus is on reading for the sake of reading, or “living through” a text. Rosenblatt explained that “the distinction between nonaesthetic and aesthetic lies not in the presence or absence of emotive and cognitive elements but in the primary direction and focus of the reader’s attention” (p. 45). In one of the few empirical studies that has dealt with children’s aesthetic reading, Many (1991) compared aesthetic and efferent reading, finding that children engage more fully and demonstrate more sophisticated understanding of texts when they focus on the personal experience of reading rather than on comprehension. Prominent reader-response scholars have called for further attention to aesthetic reading, suggesting that researchers might be able to discover “some sort of a common world of subjective experiences” (Purves et al., 1995, p. 52) or produce “a possible typology of pleasures” (Sipe, 1999, p. 124). Conceptual Framework Drawing upon prior research in reading interests and preferences, relevance assessment, and reader response, this study investigated children’s selection of books in a recreational context as a particular kind of relevance assessment. The process of relevance judgment was envisioned as a transaction


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between the user and the document that is similar to the transactions that underlie readers’ responses to literature (Rosenblatt, 1994). This study thus extends Rosenblatt’s transactional theory into the realm of relevance assessment. The study focuses on aesthetic relevance (cf. Green, 1997), in which individuals assess documents for the potential reading experience they may provide. This kind of relevance, though little understood at present, seems to underlie the reasons for and processes of book selection for recreational reading. Children’s responses during their interactions with books during this process draw upon aesthetic-relevance factors; this study seeks to identify the specific factors that influence children’s assessment of aesthetic relevance. Methodology Because no prior research has examined relevance criteria in selecting books for recreational reading, this study takes an exploratory approach. Structured as an instrumental case study (Stake, 1995), the research investigated how a diverse sample of children used the ICDL to select books for recreational reading. The case study approach is well suited to the study’s aims to develop an understanding of children’s natural processes of selecting books and to evaluate the success of the ICDL in supporting children’s information-seeking behavior in this context (Merriam, 1998). This article offers an embedded analysis (Yin, 2003), focusing only on the factors that influence children’s selection of books for recreational reading rather than examining children’s use of the ICDL holistically. Research Questions The overarching research question for this study is

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How do children use the ICDL to select books for recreational reading?

Foreshadowing questions supporting this central question include

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were 96 first- through fifth-grade students from eleven classrooms: 24 children each in the second and third grades and 16 children each in the first, fourth, and fifth grades. Half the participants in each grade were boys, and half were girls. In order to examine children’s information behavior in a recreational context, the participants were observed outside of their classrooms in the comfortable setting of the offices of the media specialist and the reading specialist. As a result, children tended to view their sessions with the ICDL as a “treat” and a pleasant break from the regularly scheduled school day. Materials and Equipment The ICDL collection is intended for use by and with children ages 3–13 (Collection Development Policy, 2005). The collection includes both shorter, heavily illustrated picture books suitable for beginning readers and longer, text-heavy chapter books for more advanced readers. At the time of the study, the ICDL collection included 196 books in 20 languages; two-thirds of the materials were in English, with more than 60 titles in other languages. None of the participants in the study had prior experience with the ICDL. The ICDL software offers direct access to the digitized books themselves as well as a robust interface for browsing the collection. During the study, the ICDL interface was implemented in two ways: “ICDL Enhanced,” a Java version, and “ICDL Basic,” an HTML-and-JavaScript version. In each version, the ICDL collection was accessible through two main areas. The “World” area enabled access to the collection by offering a globe children could “spin” to select books from, about, or set in one of the world’s six inhabited continents. The “Categories” area was organized in traditional categories (e.g., subject, genre, age, and publication date) and in novel categories (e.g., characters, color of book cover, and shape). Using ICDL to select books mirrors the process of browsing for books in a traditional library. After a child selects a continent or category from the World or Categories area, the Results screen (Figure 1) appears, presenting the child with

What factors influence children’s selection of books for recreational reading? Are children influenced by different factors at different stages of the book-selection process? Are children of different ages influenced by different factors when selecting books for recreational reading? Are children of different genders influenced by different factors when selecting books for recreational reading?

The findings are presented in sections according to these questions. Setting and Participants The study was conducted at a public elementary school in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, with a diverse population comprised of 47% White, 42% African-American, 8% Asian, and 3% Latino students. The study participants 1748

FIG. 1.

ICDL Basic, Results screen.


the covers of the books from which to choose. After selecting a book by single-clicking it, the child sees the book’s descriptive metadata in a Book Preview screen (Figure 2), a process that is analogous to pulling the book from the shelf to examine it. If the book appears sufficiently interesting, the child can click on the book cover to open the book. Once at the Book Reader screen (Figure 3), the child may view the complete book text and images. At the Book Reader screen, the child can browse the book sequentially or sample several pages from an overview. The child can exit the book at any point. For this study, the ICDL software was loaded on three identical laptops and used with three identical one-button mice (to minimize mouse-use confusion with younger children). Special logging versions of the ICDL software were prepared to capture sequences of mouse clicks. Video cameras were set up to point over the children’s shoulders at the computer screens to capture children’s interactions with the software and with one another. Data Collection Data were collected in the field by the author and two research assistants. The data collection procedure drew upon the method of concurrent verbal protocol analysis, also known as think-aloud protocol, to gain insight into the participants’ thoughts processes as they used the ICDL (Ericsson & Simon, 1993). Because even adolescents can face challenges with the conventional think-aloud protocol (Branch, 2000, 2001), the related method of constructive interaction is better suited for use with elementary-age children (Nielsen, 1993). In keeping with this method, the children in this study worked in pairs, which were formed by their teachers based on reading ability and ability to work together cooperatively. These pairs of children used the two versions of the ICDL software to find books they both wanted to read, and to read the chosen books together. The utterances that arose naturally during the conversation between

FIG. 3.

ICDL Basic, Book Reader screen.

children as they discussed their book selections were used as an indication of the factors that influenced their decisions. For each session, the field researchers read from a script orienting the children to the purpose of the software and explaining the study procedures. They explained that the children were free to spend as much time looking for a book as they wanted, open as many books as they wanted, and read as much of each book as they wanted. The children were instructed to tell the field researchers when they were finished. In all, the researchers worked with each pair of children for varying amounts of time, ranging from 10 minutes to more than an hour. Although the script provided some standard structure across the sessions, children’s use of the ICDL was entirely self-directed and unmediated. If questions or problems arose, the field researchers responded; the focus, however, was on unobtrusive observation. The three field researchers worked with the student participants during five on-site data collection sessions over 10 days in the spring of 2003. Data included 96 log files from each library session (i.e., two log files from each pair of children); videotapes of the interactions with the software and each other; and observational notes. Dialog from videotapes of the sessions was transcribed verbatim by the author, resulting in 48 transcriptions. In this article, date, field researcher code, and session number identify individual transcripts. Coding and Analysis

FIG. 2.

ICDL Basic, Book Preview screen.

Prior analysis of the log files produced descriptive statistics of children’s book browsing behavior, such as the number of categories browsed and the most popular book titles (Reuter & Druin, 2004). This article extends this analysis by using the videotape transcriptions to identify the factors that influenced the children’s selection decisions. The prior analysis found no differences in children’s behavior related to the version of the software used (i.e., Enhanced or Basic) and so the data were combined for this analysis.


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To guide the analysis, the model of the overall process of browsing the ICDL for book selection was adapted from the multistage model of document use developed by Wang and colleagues (Wang & Soergel, 1998; Wang & White, 1999). As in that model, this one centers on decision points (Figure 4). However, the different nature of the tasks involved as well as differences in system design and level of access to documents required some modification. Wang’s model depicts the stages of document use during a research project: selecting records from a bibliographic database, reading some of the selected articles, and finally citing some of the articles in research reports. In this study, however, the decision stages are tied to the screens in the ICDL described above. After browsing a category in the ICDL, the user enters the selecting stage, accessing the Results screen to decide whether to choose a book. After choosing a book, the user enters the judging stage, accessing the Book Preview screen to decide whether to open the book. After opening a book, the user enters the sampling stage, accessing the full text of the book in the Book Reader screen to decide whether to embark on sustained reading. At any point in the process, the user can decide to end the process, restart, or pick it up at a different stage. Based on a preliminary review of the transcripts, the author developed an initial coding scheme representing the factors that influenced children’s selection of books at each decision point in the modified Wang model. Factors of interest included both criteria and document-information elements (Wang & Soergel, 1998; Wang & White, 1999) to allow identification of the full range of factors that children consider.

FIG. 4. Model of decision stages in book selection, based on Wang and colleagues (Wang & Soergel, 1998; Wang & White, 1999).

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The author next worked with a colleague to review a portion of the transcripts to refine code labels and definitions, and to develop a protocol for marking and coding utterances. Within this protocol, utterances were defined as continuous units of conversation, and exchanges between participants that involved repetition of a preceding utterance were marked as one unit; utterance units that touched on more than one factor could receive multiple codes. Printouts of the transcripts were then reviewed line by line and utterances were coded by hand according to the initial coding scheme. During this initial review process, code labels and definitions evolved and new codes were introduced. As a test of reliability, the remaining transcripts were coded separately in several rounds, with an overall 92% agreement between the coders. Differences were resolved by discussion. The author next used a clustering strategy to group related factors into meaningful dimensions to identify more general patterns in the data (Miles & Huberman, 1994). The final coding scheme with code definitions and example utterances is included in the Appendix.

Findings Relevance Factors: What Factors Influence Children’s Selection of Books for Recreational Reading? While selecting books, the children in this study mentioned 46 factors, which formed seven dimensions (see Table 1 and Appendix). The most prominent is the metadata and physical entity dimension, which includes such factors as title, author, recency, and so on. This population of emerging readers also focused on factors related to accessibility, including developmentally related factors such as level of difficulty, length, and text density and such pragmatic factors as language and legibility. Several factors formed along a content dimension, focusing on aspects of what a book is about, including plot, illustrations, topic, subject headings, and summary. In the context of recreational reading, engagement was an important dimension for many children, who focused on their own responses to books and spoke about interest, liking, and reading experiences. Perhaps inspired by the variety of the ICDL collection, factors also emerged along a novelty dimension, in which children indulged their curiosity, sought variety, and pursued the unusual. The converse dimension is familiarity, exemplified by utterances of children who sought known items or books with which they had previous experience. Finally, factors also centered on a sociocultural dimension: children’s identifications of personal connections in their selections or notations of ties to a culture or community of family, friends, classmates, and teachers. Across the entire process of book selection, the children mentioned the factors along the metadata and physical entity dimension most frequently. This dimension contains many of the factors called document-information elements by Wang and colleagues (Wang & Soergel, 1998; Wang & White, 1999). Title was by the far most frequently mentioned, noted


TABLE 1.

Factors influencing book selection, grouped by dimension.

Dimensions and factors

Pairs

Mentions (by factor)

Total mentions (by dimension)

Metadata & physical entity Title Cover Front matter Format Author/illustrator Presence of illustrations Recency Table of contents End papers Contributor Notes

37 19 26 13 7 7 6 9 3 1 1

77.1% 39.6% 54.2% 27.1% 14.6% 14.6% 12.5% 18.8% 6.3% 2.1% 2.1%

263 38 34 23 10 10 10 9 3 1 1

18.0% 2.6% 2.3% 1.6% 0.7% 0.7% 0.7% 0.6% 0.2% 0.1% 0.1%

402

27.5%

Accessibility Language Length Legibility Quantity Level of difficulty Text density

38 37 31 23 13 3

79.2% 77.1% 64.6% 47.9% 27.1% 6.3%

132 108 51 40 18 3

9.0% 7.4% 3.5% 2.7% 1.2% 0.2%

352

24.1%

Content Illustrations Summary Topic Plot Genre Subject headings Style

36 21 19 24 14 4 4

75.0% 43.8% 39.6% 50.0% 29.2% 8.3% 8.3%

105 48 47 33 26 5 4

7.2% 3.3% 3.2% 2.3% 1.8% 0.3% 0.3%

267

18.3%

Engagement Liking “Coolness” Mood Quality Interest Reading experience Visual appeal Interaction

17 18 16 14 9 8 5 2

35.4% 37.5% 33.3% 29.2% 18.8% 16.7% 10.4% 4.2%

38 31 28 23 12 9 7 3

2.6% 2.1% 1.9% 1.6% 0.8% 0.6% 0.5% 0.2%

152

10.4%

Novelty Curiosity Language curiosity Novelty Unusualness Variety

20 21 16 11 7

41.7% 43.8% 33.3% 22.9% 14.6%

52 49 28 14 7

3.6% 3.3% 1.9% 1.0% 0.5%

150

10.3%

Socio-cultural Origin Knowledge sharing Community ties Personal connection Intertextuality Values Popularity

19 20 11 6 6 4 3

39.6% 41.7% 22.9% 12.5% 12.5% 8.3% 6.3%

30 27 13 10 9 5 3

2.1% 1.8% 0.9% 0.7% 0.6% 0.3% 0.2%

97

6.6%

Familiarity Known item Previous experience

12 16

25.0% 33.3%

25 18

1.7% 1.2%

43

2.9%

1463

100.0%

1463

100.0%

Totals

Note. Pairs refers to participant pairs; Mentions refers to number and percent of factors or dimensions mentioned during book selection. N of participant pairs 48.


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by more than three-quarters of the child pairs and accounting for nearly one-fifth of all factors mentioned overall. Accessibility was the next most prominent dimension, accounting for nearly one-quarter of the factors mentioned. Children especially were concerned with locating readable materials of an appropriate length. Within the content dimension, illustrations emerged as one of the most compelling factors in children’s selections: they were mentioned at least once by three-quarters of the children in the study. The remaining dimensions were not as prominent. Overall, children were much more likely to be motivated by novelty than familiarity, mentioning a wider array of factors related to novelty and emphasizing these factors much more frequently. In the engagement dimension, more than onethird of the children referred to their liking for and the “coolness” of particular books or aspects of books. Although a variety of factors emerged to form a sociocultural dimension, they were not mentioned as often as most of the other factors.

Differences by Stage: Are children Influenced by Different Factors at Different Stages of the Book-Selection Process? Throughout the process of book selection in the ICDL, users are presented with successively richer representations of books as they move from screen to screen. In each stage, users might be influenced by different information: thumbnail book covers in the Results screen, descriptive metadata on the Book Preview screen, and full text and images in the Book Reader screen. Children’s decisions were governed by different kinds of factors at different stages in the selection process (Table 2). Children consistently concerned themselves with factors in the metadata and physical entity dimension throughout the stages. Their focus on novelty factors was high during the selection stage, as they browsed the Results screen, but decreased sharply in the judging and sampling stages as they selected and opened individual books. Conversely, children’s

TABLE 2.

Dimensions across decision stages.

Dimension Accessibility Content Engagement Familiarity Metadata & physical entity Novelty Socio-cultural Totals

Selecting mentions

Judging mentions

Sampling Mentions

97 66 61 30 193

16.4% 11.2% 10.3% 5.1% 32.7%

110 47 23 6 103

33.6% 14.4% 7.0% 1.8% 31.5%

145 155 67 7 106

26.6% 28.4% 12.3% 1.3% 19.4%

112 32 591

19.0% 5.4% 100.0%

20 18 327

6.1% 5.5% 100.0%

18 47 545

3.3% 8.6% 100.0%

Note. Mentions refers to number and percent of factors mentioned during book selection. N of participant pairs 48.

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mentions of content factors peaked in the sampling stage, as they “leafed through” books. While a focus on accessibility is present in the selection stage, it peaked during the judging stage, when children were presented with descriptive metadata, and remained high in the sampling stage, when children had to commit to reading their books. Selecting. After selecting a category or continent to browse, children were presented with thumbnail book covers on the Results screen. At this stage, children tended to approach selection haphazardly, dragging the mouse across the screen and careening from one part of the display to the next. Children often leaned in close to the screen to examine the thumbnail book covers. During selection, metadata factors were most dominant, accounting for nearly one-third of the factors mentioned. More than two-thirds of the child pairs referred to book titles when making selection decisions, reading several titles out loud in whole or in part. For example, one pair of fifth-grade boys paged through the results, reading the titles: “Harlem, Five Little Friends, Graymouse Family, March on London” (5/2-R-3). Several pairs of children also commented on the book covers: one third-grade boy wondered to his partner what a particular book might be about; his partner looked more closely and, referring to the illustration on the cover, said, “It looks like a fossil” (5/2-R-5). During selection, one-fifth of the factors mentioned were related to novelty. Typical of children who exhibited the curiosity factor while browsing the results, one fourth-grade girl remarked, “What’s that one? Let’s see what that is” (4/30-L-5). Similarly, approximately one-third of the children expressed curiosity about languages other than English: one third-grade boy urged his partner to select a book from the results, saying, “Let’s see that. That might be in Japanese!” (5/2-L-2). Although the Results screen offers access only to thumbnail book covers, children detected and responded to rich cues embedded in these tiny images to guide their selection decisions. Most frequently, children used the title to infer the language of a book. Nearly half the children mentioned language, in many cases referring to any non-English book as Chinese. One pair of first-grade girls pointed to a book cover with a title in unfamiliar script, remarking, “Oh, that one’s Chinese” (5/2-L-5). Children mentioned a wide variety of additional factors in this stage, such as mood or genre. One pair of first-grade boys singled out a book from the results by observing, “That one looks the scariest!” (5/2-L-1). Scanning the results, one fourth-grade girl asked her partner, “You see anything?” Her partner responded, “Nothing that looks like a poem book” (5/2-L-4). Children clearly felt comfortable using book covers alone to identify suitable books. Judging. After selecting a book from the Results screen, the children accessed the book’s descriptive metadata on the Book Preview screen. In the judging stage, metadata factors continued to dominate. Again, while judging their selections, nearly


two-thirds of the children referred to book titles, generally reading several titles throughout their search session. In this stage, factors related to accessibility became more prominent. Nearly two-thirds of the children referred to the number of pages, information that had not been available to them on the Results screen. In this stage, length was the top factor accounting for nearly one-quarter of all the factors mentioned. One first-grade boy urged his partner to check the book’s length in order to ensure it was not too long: “How much pages are there? So we don’t have to read a lot” (4/30-L-6). Similarly, when judging their first selection, one pair of first-grade girls made note of the book’s length, remarking, “32 pages?!? How are we going to read that? I think we should go back!” (4/28-L-2). Children routinely checked the number of pages for many of their selections. Also within the accessibility dimension, language was a strong focus for one-third of the pairs. Again, children seemed to infer the language of a book from its title. One first-grade boy gave his partner the go-ahead to open a book, remarking, “Okay, [click on] ‘Read book.’ It’s making me think it’s in English” (4/30-L-3). On a few occasions children consulted the language field to verify the language of the book selected. A pair of second-grade boys selected a book and observed, “I can’t read it. What does it say?” Leaning into the screen, he exclaimed, “Dutch! [It says] ‘Language: Dutch’” (5/2-L-3). Although the Book Preview screen offers a wide variety of descriptive metadata, children spent very little time in the judging stage. Notably, they tended to mention far fewer factors in this stage than in the others. Children generally clicked straight into the book, virtually bypassing the Book Preview screen and ignoring most of the descriptive metadata. While such items as notes, contributor, and publisher offer little information on which to base selection decisions, the book summary and subject headings are potentially highly informative. Only 10 pairs of children referred to the summary when judging their selections; only 4 pairs seemed to notice the subject-heading links. Sampling. Once on the Book Reader screen, children generally began by paging quickly through the book, reading portions out loud or examining illustrations. Accessibility continued in prominence during the sampling stage. Many children had not consulted the descriptive metadata on the Book Preview screen; on the Book Reader screen, nearly two-thirds used the full text to discover the language of the books they opened and nearly half sought to determine the number of pages. While paging through a book, one thirdgrade girl observed, “We can’t even read this; it’s in Spanish” to which her partner responded, “Oh, now we know” (5/2-R-2). Another pair of third-grade girls was surprised by the length of a book they opened; one observed, “Whoa! It looks too long” (4/30-R-1). More than half the children referred to legibility, probably because of their difficulty in locating the ICDL software’s function that enlarges the page images in the Book Reader. Children struggled to read the text, as illustrated in

one exchange between a pair of first graders. “Okay, what does that say, I can’t read,” one boy said. The other helpfully responded, “I can see how I can make it bigger!” (4/30-L-3). However, children who did not immediately figure out how to enlarge the page often rejected books due to illegibility. Not surprisingly, the content dimension gained prominence during the sampling stage as the children accessed the books in the Book Reader screen. Access to the full text and images of the books generated a great deal of discussion. Nearly half the children referred to the book’s plot, while nearly three-quarters referred to illustrations. One secondgrade girl paused while reading a story to inspect the illustrations, observing, “I think that those two love each other” (5/7-P-3). Similarly, at the climax of another story a thirdgrade boy referred to the plot by remarking, “Whoa, the shark god’s gonna eat ‘em!” (5/2-L-2). Many books in the ICDL include jacket blurbs with book-summary information. Although children did not tend to refer to these summaries on the Book Preview page, more than one-third of the pairs paused to read the summaries when they were presented in an easily recognizable form in the books themselves. Children tended to mention content factors several times within a session, and these accounted for more than one-fourth of all the factors mentioned during this stage. While in the sampling stage, children continued to mention factors in the metadata dimension. A third of the children referred to the book’s title from the book cover or title page. Half of the children ponderously paged through the front matter, referring to the copyright page, title page, or dedication. One second-grade girl expressed her frustration by observing, “Too many title pages. Acknowledgments. That’s not the book!” (4/30-L-4). Several pairs also referred to a book’s table of contents, when it was provided. A pair of third-grade boys looked at the table of contents for a chapter book, reading the chapter titles out loud, “‘Bad Hair Day,’ chapter eight. Wanna read that one? Or ‘Angry’?” (5/2-R-5). Finally, the factors in the engagement and sociocultural dimensions peaked during this stage. Children often demonstrated high levels of engagement with their book selections. After reading several pages in a book, one fourth-grade boy made a typical remark: “This is pretty funny” (5/7-R-2). Conversely, another fourth-grade boy rejected a book, saying, “This doesn’t sound very interesting” (5/5-R-2). A second-grade girl communicated her pleasure with her pair’s book selection, commenting, “It’s really good so far!” (4/30L-4). Another second-grade girl was less satisfied, concluding, “We don’t want this book. It’s confusing” (5/7-P-3). Children also related their selections to their sociocultural environments when they referred to experiences within their shared community. The illustrations in one book reminded one first-grade girl of a recent school program: “Hey, you remember that girl at the assembly? She look[ed] like that” (5/2-L-5). A second-grade girl was reminded of their teacher, remarking, “Ms. D. will love that book!” (4/30-L-4). Children also made intertextual connections to the popular culture at large. A third-grade boy asked his partner, “Doesn’t


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children, title was mentioned by many children but was evenly matched with several other factors. For older children, title dominated among the factors, constituting nearly one-quarter of the factors mentioned by fourth graders and one-third among fifth graders. Although there is little difference across grades in the content dimension overall, a close look at the factors within the dimension reveals interesting patterns. First, mention of illustrations decreases with age (Table 4): nearly all the first graders mentioned the illustrations on several occasions, making this their most pervasive and most mentioned factor, while only half the fifth graders mentioned illustrations and on only one occasion each. In contrast, topic and summary were among the top factors among fifth graders but were scarcely mentioned by first graders. Similarly, older children emphasized the genres of their selections, a factor that younger children rarely mentioned. The other factors and dimensions—engagement, familiarity, novelty, and sociocultural—do not show such clear patterns. Differences in emphasis related to these factors and dimensions might be more individualistic and not necessarily age-related.

that look like the house in Charlie’s Angels?” (5/7-L-2). Factors related to values also influenced children’s selections in this stage. In one exchange, a pair of first-grade boys browsed the pages of a book and caught sight of an illustration of bound slaves being auctioned: “What the heck? That’s slavery!” the first boy observed; his partner responded vehemently, “That is just, that is just wrong. I’m not reading this!” (4/30-L-7). Although the factors in the engagement and sociocultural dimensions were not the most prevalent in this— or any—stage, they were nevertheless often very powerful. Differences by Age: Are Children of Different Ages Influenced by Different Factors When Selecting Books for Recreational Reading? Several interesting differences were revealed when the factors were analyzed related to the children’s ages (Table 3). Factors associated with the accessibility dimension—especially length (Table 4)—dominated with younger children but were not mentioned as often by older ones. Several first-grade pairs rejected selections based on length; a pair of secondgrade boys commented, “I think this story’s too big” (5/2-L-3). Text density was another accessibility factor mentioned by younger children, as with the first-grade boy who remarked, “That’s too much to read, so let’s go back” (5/2-P-4). Conversely, metadata and physical entity factors dominated with older children but were not mentioned as frequently by younger children. For instance, there is a marked increase in mention of title with age (Table 4). For younger

TABLE 3.

Differences by Gender: Are Children of Different Genders Influenced by Different Factors When Selecting Books for Recreational Reading? The boys in this study mentioned many more factors overall than the girls, while the girls had a somewhat greater engagement focus (Table 5). Girls were more likely to mention

Dimensions by age.

Dimension

1st graders’ mentions

Accessibility Content Engagement Familiarity Metadata & physical entity Novelty Socio-cultural Totals

2nd graders’ mentions

3rd graders’ mentions

4th graders’ mentions

5th graders’ mentions

78 42 33 7 50 21 15

31.7% 17.1% 13.4% 2.8% 20.3% 8.5% 6.1%

82 48 31 4 79 18 27

28.4% 16.6% 10.7% 1.4% 27.3% 6.2% 9.3%

86 70 30 10 80 45 31

24.4% 19.9% 8.5% 2.8% 22.7% 12.8% 8.8%

55 52 26 5 84 43 15

19.6% 18.6% 9.3% 1.8% 30.0% 15.4% 5.4%

51 56 31 17 109 23 9

17.2% 18.9% 10.5% 5.7% 36.8% 7.8% 3.0%

246

100.0%

289

100.0%

352

100.0%

280

100.0%

296

100.0%

Note. Mentions refers to number and percent of factors mentioned during book selection, grouped by dimension. N of 1st grader pairs 8; N of 2nd grader pairs 12; N of 3rd grader pairs 12; N of 4th grader pairs 8; N of 5th grader pairs 8.

TABLE 4. Factor

Selected factors by age. 1st graders’ mentions

Genre Illustrations Length Summary Title Topic

2 27 25 2 25 4

0.8% 11.0% 10.2% 0.8% 10.2% 1.6%

2nd graders’ mentions 0 25 24 6 44 7

0.0% 8.7% 8.3% 2.1% 15.2% 2.4%

3rd graders’ mentions 5 35 32 12 38 4

1.4% 9.9% 9.1% 3.4% 10.8% 1.1%

4th graders’ mentions 6 14 18 12 64 15

2.1% 5.0% 6.4% 4.3% 22.9% 5.4%

5th graders’ mentions 13 4 9 16 92 17

4.4% 1.4% 3.0% 5.4% 31.1% 5.7%

Note. Mentions refers to number and percent of factors mentioned during book selection. N of 1st grader pairs 8; N of 2nd grader pairs 12; N of 3rd grader pairs 12; N of 4th grader pairs 8; N of 5th grader pairs 8.

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TABLE 5.

Dimensions by gender.

Dimension

Girl pairs’ mentions

Boy pairs’ mentions

Accessibility Content Engagement Familiarity Metadata & physical entity Novelty Socio-cultural

135 98 76 13 153 74 33

23.2% 16.8% 13.1% 2.2% 26.3% 12.7% 5.7%

217 170 75 30 249 76 64

24.6% 19.3% 8.5% 3.4% 28.3% 8.6% 7.3%

Totals

582

100.0%

881

100.0%

Note. Mentions refers to number and percent of factors mentioned during book selection, grouped by dimension. N of girl pairs 24; N of boy pairs 24.

factors such as interest, liking, and quality. They often checked with their partners to express their interest during selection with comments such as, “What about that? That one looks interesting” (4/30-L-4), or to share their satisfaction after reading with remarks such as, “I like that book. I like poems” (4/30-L-2). Girls also emphasized novelty in their selection behavior, particularly curiosity. Girls frequently urged each other to select books based on curiosity: “What’s that one? Let’s see what that is!” (4/30-L-5). Boys were somewhat more likely than girls to mention content factors, emphasizing the subjects of their selections: books on machines (4/30-P-1), sharks (5/2-P-3), and animals (4/30-R-2). Boys also mentioned more factors in the sociocultural dimension. They more often noted intertextual relationships to items from popular culture, such as the television show American Idol (5/2-L-3), the movie Charlie’s Angels (5/7-L-2), or the book Tom Swift (4/30-L-6). Several pairs of boys also referred to the moral values of books, a factor never mentioned by girls. Overall, however, differences in the types of factors mentioned by girls and by boys are few and slight. Discussion Understanding Book Selection The findings of this study are consistent with much of the previous research in children’s book selection and their reading interests and preferences. As in previous studies, the children in this study focused on the physical characteristics and accessibility of books in their selections (Campbell et al., 1988; Fleener et al., 1997; Kragler & Nolley, 1996; Pejtersen, 1986; Reutzel & Gali, 1997). Factors in the engagement and sociocultural dimensions correspond with many of the factors identified in previous research on book selection among children and adults, including mood, emotional response, and personal connection (Carter & Harris, 1982; Moss & Hendershot, 2002; Pejtersen, 1986; Rinehart et al., 1998; Ross, 1999; Samuels, 1989; Spiller, 1980; Swartz & Hendricks, 2000). In addition to confirming findings of previous research, this study offers some new insights into the processes that children use to select books. This study found that the process of book selection progresses through discrete stages

in which different kinds of factors predominate. In the early stages of the process, factors within the novelty and familiarity dimensions play a large role in catching attention and differentiating books from one another. Children are first attracted to books that are new or unusual, or they seem to home in on books they recognize from previous experience. Early on, the content and engagement dimensions are also strong as children judge cover illustrations according to such factors as “coolness” or interest. In later stages, the novelty and familiarity dimensions are less prevalent, superseded especially by factors in the accessibility dimension. After the initial selection, the process becomes more analytical, with children judging their selections according to practical factors, such as language, level of difficulty, and length. In the final stage of the process, when children must commit to reading, the content and engagement dimensions gain their highest prominence. Again, children are drawn by “coolness” or interest in illustrations and/or plot, and assess their own liking and/or the book’s quality. Throughout the process, factors along the metadata dimension hold steady. In particular, children consistently mentioned titles and seemed to use them to infer suitability related to factors in other dimensions, such as language, “coolness,” or genre. The children in this study showed a few distinct differences in book selection by age, a finding that is consistent with many of the studies that examine children’s reading interests and preferences (Cooper, 2002; Fleener et al., 1997; Kragler & Nolley, 1996; Lewis, 1989; Rinehart et al., 1998; Robinson et al., 1997; Swartz & Hendricks, 2000; Timion, 1992) and their literary responses (Applebee, 1978; Beach & Wendler, 1987; Galda, 1990; Hickman, 1981; Lehr, 1988). As beginning readers, the first and second graders in this study were naturally preoccupied with length, level of difficulty, and related accessibility factors during book selection. They were less focused than older children on text and relied more heavily on illustrations to gain insight into the suitability of their selections. With greater reading experience, older children attended to a wider variety of other factors and exhibited stronger preferences for certain genres or topics, which often guided their selections. Older children are also more socialized to the library (Cooper, 2004) and were more competent using titles and other metadata factors to provide them with important cues to evaluate their selections. These findings suggest that cognitive and developmental ability play a role in children’s book selection. Although this study did not gather data related to the participants’ abilities, future research should delve more deeply into the role of cognitive and developmental factors in children’s book selection. Although previous research in reading preferences has emphasized the role of gender in book selection, this study found few differences in the process used by girls and boys to select books. The most prominent difference did not relate to the kinds of factors used to assess relevance but rather to the number of factors mentioned. Previous analysis of the log files from this study had indicated that boys executed more queries and accessed more books than girls (Reuter & Druin, 2004). Boys’ more extensive activity might have


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presented them with more opportunities to mention selection factors. The previous analysis also revealed differences in the titles that were most popular with boys and girls: boys chose books with darker cover imagery featuring cars, sharks, and a skeleton, while girls chose lighter and more colorful fare featuring bugs and rabbits (Reuter & Druin, 2004). As was found in other research in reading preferences (Doiron, 2003), the children in this study seemed to have perceptions of “girl books” and “boy books.” Overall, however, the kinds of factors mentioned by boys and girls were quite similar. While gender differences might become evident in the outcome of book selection (that is, in the actual books selected), the process used by boys and girls to select books does not seem to differ. Expanding Theories of Relevance While the overall multistage process of book selection for recreational reading resembles the document-selection process in a research task described by Wang and others (Wang & Soergel, 1998; Wang & White, 1999), the details play out rather differently. In their analysis of relevance across situations, Barry and Schamber (1998) found a great deal of overlap of relevance criteria in differing situations of information use. However, few of their cross-situational “criterion categories” correspond with the dimensions identified in this study. Only their “affectiveness” category compares closely with the engagement dimension in this study. Other factors identified by Barry and Schamber, such as accuracy and clarity, might be central in a research or problem-solving task but do not seem to apply in the context of recreational reading. Although they identified many kinds of relevance criteria that apply across situations, Barry and Schamber (1998) recognized a few that did not, largely due to differences in source type as well as task and situation. The availability of illustrated, full-text sources in the ICDL introduces many content and metadata and physical entity factors—including illustrations, plot, and book cover—that are probably specific to recreation-al reading. Furthermore, the task of locating a book in the context of recreational reading emphasizes a rich array of engagement factors, such as mood, “coolness,” and liking. Situated in a recreational context, this study identified a variety of factors and dimensions used to assess relevance that have not previously been identified in the relevance research. This article introduces aesthetic relevance not as an alternative to traditional notions of relevance but rather to broaden the concept of relevance and draw attention to an often overlooked aspect of it. According to reader-response theorist Rosenblatt (1994), most reading occurs somewhere at the middle of a continuum of efferent and aesthetic reading: the “play of attention back and forth between the efferent and the aesthetic is undoubtedly much more characteristic of our daily lives than is usually acknowledged” (p. 37). For example, a scholar might relish the artfulness in an argument, while a reader might gain a solution to a problem from 1756

a novel read in leisure. Green (1997) similarly suggested that aesthetic relevance is not opposed to, but rather complementary to, traditional relevance by observing that the best writings offer a blend of factual knowledge and enjoyable experience. Recent user-centered perspectives on relevance have emphasized its dynamic and situational nature, showing that the factors individuals use to judge relevance are highly personal. The concept of aesthetic relevance pushes the usercentered notion of relevance still further, by emphasizing not only the utility of information contained in a document for an individual’s particular need but also the personal experience of reading the document itself. This study offers a framework for exploring and expanding the concept of relevance to understand the process of document selection in a variety of contexts. By examining the full range of factors— both traditional and aesthetic—at work in relevance assessment, LIS research can produce richer, more meaningful accounts of people’s interactions with information in different contexts. Implications Designing Digital Libraries for Children This study was initially undertaken to shed light on children’s use of the ICDL and to influence the design and development of the ICDL. The findings suggest a number of recommendations for the design of digital libraries and other systems to support children’s book selection. Elicit engagement. The goal of recreational reading is engagement. In this study, the focus on engagement was highest when children had access to full text and images from the books. In the early stages of book selection, there is no substitute for the multitude of cues embedded in book covers, which even young children are skilled at interpreting. As noted above, a number of studies have shown that the book cover is central to children’s book selection (Campbell et al., 1988; Carter, 1988; Fleener et al., 1997; Kragler & Nolley, 1996; Moss & Hendershot, 2002; Reutzel & Gali, 1997; Rinehart et al., 1998; Swartz & Hendricks, 2000; Wendelin & Zinck, 1983). Rosenblatt (1994) has observed that in the context of efferent reading, a summary, paraphrase, or surrogate of a text might be as useful as the original text, while only the original text can provide the full experience the reader seeks through aesthetic reading. Preserving the rich, visual properties of books rather than providing only textual surrogates is crucial in eliciting engagement and supporting children’s book selection. Support evaluation. Later in the process of book selection, children seem to become more analytical, evaluating their selections more critically. While direct access to the full text and images of the books was effective in supporting these children’s decision making, they tended to bypass the surrogates


on the Book Preview screen, even though this is the one stage at which information is specifically packaged to permit analysis and evaluation. Children did routinely attend to the number of pages when accessing the Book Preview screen. Once in the Book Reader screen, they accessed book summaries, reflecting other research that has shown that children do rely on such information as back-of-the-book summaries when making book selections (Fleener et al., 1997; Rinehart et al., 1998; Swartz & Hendricks, 2000). This finding suggests that the current design of the Book Preview screen might be lacking or not effectively highlighting the information children require to evaluate their selections. Instead, the screen design might highlight popular elements such as language and length as well as less popular but potentially meaningful elements, such as summary or subject headings. At the same time, removing elements that are not particularly informative, such as publisher, contributor, or notes, might declutter the screen and help children attend to more useful elements. Furthermore, including content previews commonly used in video abstracting, such as visual abstracts, video skims, or storyboards, might give children the opportunity to engage with the visual properties of books without being required to open them. Accentuate accessibility. Overall, children in this study focused on locating accessible materials, in terms of both level of difficulty and the languages represented in ICDL’s specialized collection. While children can search the ICDL’s collection by age level or language, the children in this study did so infrequently. As a consequence, the search results often included a wide range of levels of difficulty—from picture books to chapter books—and languages. Different design features might permit children to assess books on these factors earlier in the process. For example, the Results screen might automatically sort the book covers by important accessibility factors, such as language, length, and level of difficulty. Supporting Recreational Reading The findings from this study also suggest ways to facilitate the book-selection process to support and promote recreational reading. Allow children to choose. More than 160 children signed up for and nearly 100 participated enthusiastically in this study. Children spent, on average, 30 minutes browsing for and reading books in the ICDL; one pair of second-grade girls voluntarily spent more than an hour. On average, the children in this study accessed seven books during their session with the ICDL; one pair of fifth-grade boys accessed a total of 30 books. Children have been found to show greater interest in reading when they are allowed to select their own books rather than receiving teacher-assigned basal readers (Campbell et al., 1988). Many educators share the experience that children are often able to read beyond their supposed reading levels when

they choose reading material for themselves (Carter, 2000; Hunt, 1996/1997; Krashen, 2004). When asked by one researcher how they would help other children learn to like reading, children responded that they would offer time to read books of their own choosing during the school day (Roettger, 1980). Previous research suggests that simply by offering children opportunities to choose their own books without any constraints, librarians, educators, and parents may provide greater motivation for children to read. Future research should further investigate the potential of self-selection of reading materials to encourage reading and literacy development. Emphasize engagement. Although factors related to engagement were much more frequently mentioned in this study than in other studies of relevance, the engagement dimension was not as prominent as might have been expected. The literature on reader response focuses largely on supporting children’s critical responses and reading comprehension rather than on exploring their aesthetic responses and reading engagement. Classroom strategies often focus on understanding rather than enjoying texts. As a result, young children might lack the experience to evaluate a book’s potential for engagement. Research on pleasure reading among adults has suggested that adult avid readers deeply engage with books using highly personal, even instinctive criteria (Ross, 1999; Spiller, 1980). Future research should explore strategies librarians and educators might use to emphasize the aesthetic side of selection, such as guiding children to focus on their own engagement, to become aware of their own reading preferences, and to select books best suited to those preferences. Conclusion This study was undertaken to investigate an important aspect of children’s information behavior: book selection in a recreational context. Because the LIS field has limited much of its research to professional and academic settings, much more work is necessary to expand current understanding of information behavior across contexts. Future work on book selection should validate the findings presented here in additional contexts. The importance of various factors and dimensions should be investigated with other collections and other user populations and in traditional as well as digital library settings. The diverse, international nature of the ICDL collection may have inspired children to explore unfamiliar and unusual books, emphasizing the novelty dimension. Looking at factors that influence selection in other types of collections might show different patterns. Because this study worked with elementary-school children, developmentally related accessibility factors (e.g., level of difficulty and length) were highly prominent. This situation is unlikely to be the case with other user populations, including older students and adults. Other differences, such as computer ability, prior experience with ICDL, reading skills, language(s) spoken, etc., are also likely to influence selection habits among different populations. Future research might also compare


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book selection processes in traditional libraries to those within digital libraries. Finally, researchers might explore the wider applicability of the concept of aesthetic relevance by investigating how the dimensions and factors identified in this study might apply in academic and professional settings. Acknowledgments This research was conducted with the assistance and support of the faculty, staff, and student members of the ICDL Research Team at the University of Maryland, led by Allison Druin, Ben Bederson, and Ann Carlson Weeks. Special thanks to Sheri Massey for her assistance in coding the data and refining the coding scheme, and to Delia Neuman, Marilyn White, and Rebecca Green for their helpful comments on early drafts of this article. This work has been supported in part by an Information Technology Research grant from the National Science Foundation (#0205082) and a National Leadership grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (#LG02020026-02). References Anderson, G., Higgins, D., & Wurster, S.R. (1985). Differences in the freereading books selected by high, average, and low achievers. The Reading Teacher, 39(3), 326–330. Applebee, A.N. (1978). The Child’s Concept of Story. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Barry, C.L. (1994). User-defined relevance criteria: An exploratory study. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 45(3), 149–159. Barry, C.L., & Schamber, L. (1998). Users’ criteria for relevance evaluation: A cross-situational comparison. Information Processing & Management, 34(2/3), 219–236. Beach, R., & Wendler, L. (1987). Developmental differences in response to a story. Research in the Teaching of English, 21(3), 286–297. Benton, M. (1999). Readers, texts, contexts: Reader-response criticism. In P. Hunt (Ed.), Understanding Children’s Literature (pp. 81–99). London: Routledge. Bilal, D. (2000). Children’s use of the Yahooligans! Web search engine: I. Cognitive, physical, and affective behaviors on fact-based search tasks. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 51(7), 646–665. Boraks, N., Hoffman, A., & Bauer, D. (1997). Children’s book preferences: Patterns, particulars, and possible implications. Reading Psychology, 18(4), 309–341. Branch, J.L. (2000). Investigating the information-seeking processes of adolescents: The value of using think alouds and think afters using Microsoft Encarta 98. Library & Information Science Research, 22(4), 371–392. Branch, J.L. (2001). Junior high students and think alouds: Generating information-seeking process data using concurrent verbal protocols. Library & Information Science Research, 23(2), 107–122. Campbell, K.C., Griswold, D.L., & Smith, F.H. (1988). Effects of tradebook covers (hardback or paperback) on individualized reading choices of elementary-age children. Reading Improvement, 25, 166–178. Carter, B. (2000). Formula for failure: Reading levels and readability formulas do not create lifelong readers. School Library Journal, 46, 34–37. Carter, B., & Harris, K. (1982). What junior high students like in books. Journal of Reading, 26(1), 42–46. Carter, M.A. (1988). How children choose books: Implications for helping develop readers. Ohio Reading Teacher, 22, 15–21. Case, D.O. (2002). Looking for Information: A Survey of Research on Information Seeking, Needs, and Behavior. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Childress, G.T. (1985). Gender gap in the library: Different choices for girls and boys. Top of the News, 42(1), 69–73.

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Appendix Factors are listed alphabetically according to dimension. Each factor includes a brief definition and example utterances from participants to illustrate the factor. TABLE A1.

Coding scheme for factors.

Factor

Definition

ACCESSIBILITY Language

Mention of an unfamiliar language of the book

Legibility

Mention of the legibility of the book text on the screen

Length

Mention of how long the book is, especially as related to reading time or difficulty

Level of difficulty

Mention of the difficulty of a book, often related to age levels

Quantity

Mention of the number of books displayed in the search results

Text density

CONTENT Genre

Illustrations

Mention of the amount of text on a page, generally as an indication of level of difficulty

Mention of the genre of the book

Mention of the content of illustrations, including observation, interpretation, expectations, or questions

Example utterance(s)

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Plot

Mention of the plot or events of the story, including observation, interpretation, expectations, or questions

• • •

“I don’t know that writing.” (5/5-P-2) “That’s not our language.” (4/30-L-3) “Man, it’s in a different language.” (5/2-L-3) “They’re not English words.” (5/2-P-3) “Okay, what does that say, I can’t read” / “I see how I can make it bigger.” (4/30-L-3) “Small letters, small letters.” (5/2-L-5) “It’s too small to read.” (5/2-P-5) “I just want to make the words bigger.” (5/7-R-1) “How much pages are there? So we don’t have to read a lot.” (4/30-L-6) “That’s too much to read, so let’s go back.” (5/2-P-4) “That’s a short book.” (5/2-L-5) “I think this story’s too big.” (5/2-L-3) “This book is too long.” (4/30-R-2) “That wasn’t so hard. That was easy.” (5/5-L-3) “This is hard.” (5/2-P-3) “That’s hard for me.” (5/5-P-3) “I think these are little kids’ books.” (5/7-L-2) “We need something for fourth grade.” (5/5-R-1) “That was too simple!” (5/7-R-1) “I wish they had 13-19 or whatever.” (5/2-R-3) “It looks kinda hard.” (5/2-R-3) “There’s so many books.” / “I don’t know which one to choose.” (4/28-L-2) “You pick a book.” / “No, there’s so many.” (5/2-R-5) “There’s a lot of stuff.” (4/30-P-1) “Look at how many words.” (5/5-L-3) “This one has a lot of words!” (5/2-P-5) “That’s too much to read, so let’s go back.” (5/2-P-4)

“This is an information book.” (5/2-L-1) “I think it’s a fairy tale book.” (5/2-R-2) “Oh, this is a joke book!” (5/2-R-5) “Hey, these are poems.” (4/30-L-2) “A Apple Pie sounds like an alphabet book.” (5/7-R-1) “A monkey and a rabbit?” / “It looks like there’s only one human in this whole darn thing.” (5/2-R-1) “I don’t like the way that picture looks.” (5/2-R-1) “He’s sad. He’s got an axe. He’s on some type of bear.” (5/5-R-2) “I think those two love each other.” (5/7-P-3) “Whoa, the shark god’s gonna eat ‘em!” (5/2-L-2) “I wonder what job he has?” (5/7-R-2) (Continued)

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TABLE A1.

(Continued )

Factor

Definition

Style

Mention of the book’s overall style

Subject headings

Mention of the subject headings contained in the “Appears in” field

Summary

Mention of the summary information about the book, referring either to the Book Preview screen or the book itself


• • • • • • • •

Topic

Mention of the broad topic of the book

• • • •

ENGAGEMENT Coolness

Mention of the overall perceived appeal of the book

Interaction

Mention of involvement with each other and the story

Interest

Mention of general interest in the book

• • • • • • • • • • • • •

Liking

Mention of general like or dislike for a book

Mood

Mention of the mood of the book

Quality

Mention of the expected or actual quality of the book

Reading experience

Mention of the anticipated or actual experience of reading the book

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

“I don’t want to read the ones that are cartoony. I want to read the ones that are realistic, the real ones.” (4/30-R-2) “They’re Japanese cartoony books.” (5/7-R-2) “These look too colorful.” (5/2-R-3) “‘Fairy Tales and Folk Tales, Kid Characters, Scary/Horror, Picture Books.’ [Click] ‘Read book!’” (5/7-L-2) “‘Action/Adventure.’ Okay!” (4/30-L-4) “‘An action adventure tale … about British soldiers stationed in India.’ Aww, India! Told you. This is about the British taking over India.” (5/7-R-2) “‘The entire village is watching out for him.’ What, was he like famous?” (5/7-L-1) “‘Beenybud shares her favorite story about two lizards.’ No way!” (5/2-R-3) “I thought I saw a Halloween book.” (5/5-L-3) “Ooh, a shark book!” (5/2-P-3) “Where are the animal books?” (4/30-R-2) “It’s about machines.” (4/30-P-1) “Oh, that looks cool!” (5/2-L-1) “Whoa, that looks cool!” (5/2-L-3) “Oh, that looks cool, look at the dragon!” (4/30-R-2) “What’s that? That one’s cool!” (5/2-R-1) “It’s gonna be cool to do that one.” (5/2-P-1) “Aw, cool, this rocks!” (5/7-R-2) “This is gonna be a cool book.” (5/7-L-1) “Uh oh–the shark’s gonna eat us!” (5/7-P-2) “Say it in English, but read it in Spanish.” (4/30-R-1) “That looks like an interesting book.” (5/7-R-3) “What about that, that one looks interesting.” (4/30-L-4) “Wow, this looks interesting.” (4/30-L-7) “I want to see what that one’s about. It looks interesting.” (4/30-L-2) “This doesn’t sound very interesting.” (5/5-R-2) “I like this one and that one and that one.” (5/2-L-5) “I’m not liking this book.” (5/2-L-5) “Ooh, I think I like that.” (5/2-L-3) “What about that one?” / “No, I don’t like it.” (5/7-L-5) “Oh, I like this story!” (5/2-R-1) “I like that book. I like poems.” (4/30-L-2) “I don’t like any of those books.” (5/2-R-3) “That one looks like the scariest!” (5/2-L-1) “That looks silly.” (5/2-L-5) “That’s a haunted book.” (5/7-P-2) “This one looks funny.” (5/2-L-3) “Ooh, it looks scary to me.” (5/2-P-3) “That looks weird.” (5/2-P-1) “This is pretty funny.” (5/7-R-2) “I think I See the Rhythm is good.” (4/30-L-4) “It’s really good so far!” (4/30-L-4) “Harlem would be good.” (5/5-R-3) “All of these look good.” (5/5-L-1) “I wonder which one would be better.” (4/28-L-1) “That looks terrible.” (5/7-L-1) “It looks like a nice book.” (4/30-P-1) “We don’t want this book. It’s confusing.” (5/7-P-3) “This one is boring.” (5/7-P-2) “This is fun.” (5/7-L-2) “Did you enjoy that book?” (4/30-L-2) “That was fun.” (5/2-P-1) “It would be fun to read it in French.” (5/2-R-3) (Continued)


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TABLE A1.

(Continued )

Factor

Definition


Visual appeal

Mention of the visual appeal of the book

• • • •

“Oooh, pretty!” (5/2-L-5) “Oooh, he looks ugly!” (5/7-P-3) “That’s a nice picture.” (5/7-P-2) “Aww, look at that mouse. It’s so cute!” (5/5-P-3)

FAMILIARITY Known item

Mention of a specific title, series, author, or character

• • • • • • • • • • •

“Let’s look for Little Bill books.” (5/2-P-4) “Let’s see if they have Holes.” (5/5-R-3) “Do you have any Eloise or Judy Blume books?” (5/7-R-1) “Let’s see if it has a Shel Silverstein book.” (5/2-R-3) “Let’s see if we can find Goosebumps.” (4/30-P-1) “Man, I can’t find any books that I read before.” (4/30-L-6) “I think I have this book at home.” (5/7-P-2) “I read this book!” (5/5-P-3) “I never heard of it.” (5/5-R-2) “Maybe we’ll find a book that we read before.” (5/7-L-1) “My mom used to read me that.” (5/7-R-1)

Previous experience

Mention of the familiarity of a book from previous personal experience

METADATA & PHYSICAL ENTITY Author/Illustrator Mention of the author or illustrator of the book

Contributor Cover

Mention of the contributor of the book Mention of the book’s cover

End papers Format

Mention of the book’s end papers Mention of the format of the book

Front matter

Mention of the book’s front matter

Notes

Mention of the Notes field

Presence of illustrations

Mention of the presence or absence of illustrations

Recency

Mention of the age of the book

Table of contents

Mention of the book’s table of contents

Title

Mention of the book’s title

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• • • • • •

“What is the author?” / “It’s not Shel [Silverstein].” (5/2-R-3) “‘Patrick.’ Okay.” (5/7-L-2) “‘Trevor Todd.’” (5/7-R-1) “‘Ediciones Colihue–Argentina.’” (5/2-R-3) “Look at that crazy guy. Is he a rock star?” (5/2-R-5) “That’s probably Molly’s foot and her great uncle.” (4/30-L-4) • “Oh, pick the one with the mummy. Mummy, mummy!” (5/7-P-3) • “Which one, which dinosaur do you want to do?” (5/5-R-1) • “It’s a chapter book. We don’t want a chapter book.” (5/2-L-5) • “I want a picture book.” (5/5-L-3) • “I wonder if they have magazines.” (4/30-R-2) • “Looks like a chapter book.” (5/2-R-1) • “That looks like a comic book.” (5/7-R-2) • “Oh, that was the summary.” / “The introduction, yeah.” (5/7-L-1) • “This is just the title page.” (5/7-R-1) • “Oh, this is the real book. Too many title pages. Acknowledgments. That’s not the book.” (4/30-L-4) • “‘A follow up to Seven O’ Clock Stories.’ Let’s go see something else.” (4/30-L-7) • “There are no pictures in this! Doesn’t it suck when there are no pictures?” (5/2-P-3) • “It doesn’t have any pictures.” (5/2-L-5) • “I wonder if it has pictures.” (5/7-P-2) • “Are there only pictures?” (5/5-R-3) • “This is an old book.” (5/5-R-2) • “It was made in 1890.” / “Whoa, that’s like more than a hundred years ago!” (5/7-R-2) • “Are there any modern-day books in here at all? No wonder everything looks so old.” (4/30-P-1) • “1981?!? That was a long time ago!” (5/7-L-2) • “Only eight chapters. Oh, wait, 16. Uh oh!” (4/30-L-4) • “Looks like a chapter book. I want to do this ... Go to page 15.” (5/2-R-1) • ‘“Bad Hair Day.’ Wanna read that one?” / “No, ‘Angry.’” (5/2-R-5) • “Harlem, Five Little Friends, Graymouse Family, March on London” (5/2-R-3) • “I think I See the Rhythm is good.” (4/30-L-4) • “Ancient Egyptians, written in Arabic. I want to see this one.” (5/7-L-1) • “A Apple Pie sounds like an alphabet book.” (5/7-R-1) • “Harlem would be good.” (5/5-R-3) (Continued)


TABLE A1.

(Continued )

Factor

Definition

NOVELTY Curiosity

Mention of an interest in looking at a book more closely

Language curiosity

Novelty

Mention of interest in exploring a book in an unfamiliar language

Mention of familiarity of the book within the ICDL collection


• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Unusualness

Mention of a book that stands out from others

Variety

Mention of a wish for wider selection of materials

• • •

Mention of classmates, friends, family, or teachers, or shared events

•

SOCIOCULTURAL Community ties

Intertextuality

Mention of another book, television show, movie, or entity from popular culture

• • • • • • •

Knowledge sharing

Mention of factual knowledge about an aspect of the book

• • • • • •

Origin

Mention of the place of origin of the book

Personal connection

Mention of personal connection to some aspect of the book

Popularity

Mention of a book’s level of recognition or reputation

Values

Mention of moral values

• • • • • • • • • •

“What is that book?” (4/30-L-6) “What are those?” (5/7-L-5) “Let’s see what this is.” (5/2-L-2) “Let’s see what it looks like.” (5/2-L-2) “I want to see what this is.” (5/5-P-3) “What’s that one? Let’s see what that is.” (4/30-L-5) “I like learning about other people’s language.” (4/30-L-4) “Let’s see that. That might be in Japanese.” (5/2-L-2) “Let’s see if they have any Hindi books.” (5/7-R-2) “Ancient Egyptians, written in Arabic. I want to see this one.” (5/7-L-1) “Hey, we saw those books before.” (4/30-L-3) “Try this book, because we already read that book and we already did those books.” (5/2-L-5) “We want more books to pick from.” (5/7-P-2) “Hey, isn’t this the same book?” (5/5-R-3) “What is that? It’s just black.” (5/2-P-3) “That’s a skinny book.” (5/5-R-2) “This one looks kind of interesting because it’s so thin.” (5/7-R-1) “Is that the only book?” (5/2-L-4) “Wanna do something else besides Colors?” (5/7-R-1) “See if there’s more.” (4/30-P-1) “Hey, you remember that girl at the assembly? She look[ed] like that.” (5/2-L-5) “That looks like Sandy’s picture.” (5/7-P-2) “Ms. D. will love that book.” (4/30-L-4) “This is Lassie!” (5/2-P-3) “Ooh, McDonalds!” (5/7-P-2) “It’s a really long book.” / “Yeah, it’s longer than Tom Swift.” (4/30-L-6) “Doesn’t that look like the house in Charlie’s Angels?” (5/7-L-2) “I think they’re making fun of American Idol.” (5/2-L-3) “They actually write this way. They don’t write the other way.” (5/2-R-5) “Lions and cats are cousins.” (5/5-R-3) “This is Asian writing.” / “Probably Chinese. Sanskrit doesn’t look like this.” (5/5-P-3) “In Africa they read France.” (5/2-P-4) “Hermano. That’s Spanish.” (4/30-L-6) “Hey, New Zealand isn’t in Asia. It’s in Australia.” (5/7-R-2) “Let’s go back; we’re in the wrong country.” (5/2-L-1) “Let’s see one in America.” (5/7-L-1) “1994. That’s when I was born.” (4/30-L-7) “If that was rearranged, it would spell my name.” (5/7-L-2) “Hey, that’s my last name!” (5/2-P-1) “Try that one. It looks famous.” (5/7-L-5) “It doesn’t have popular books.” (5/2-R-3) “What the heck? That’s slavery!” / “That is just, that is just wrong. I’m not reading this!” (4/30-L-7) “Gross, look, they’re naked.” (5/2-L-1) “Oh, they’re not wearing many shirts. I think those people should wear shirts.” (5/2-R-1)


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