International Children's Digital Libary website

As some of you might know, I am an active member of Tapped In, an online community for educators. Tapped In holds many real-time chat sessions during the week. I decided I am going to start blogging sessions I attend.

I attended the session for web tools on Monday. We discussed the International Children's Digital Libary website. The International Children's Digital Libary is a digital library of children's books from all over the world. There are about 900 books in 35 different languages.

The discussion leader asked us to make note of the different ways you can search for a book.

You can search for books by......

• location/continent
• language
• title
• author
• subjects
• color of book cover
• age of reader
• length of book
• picture books or chapter books
• make believe or true books
  

and there even more ways to search for books on the site

I was not sure why anyone would want to search for a book by the color of the cover. I asked the discussion leader this question. I was told kids remember books by color. I realized after that how this is helpful. I thought about how kids could read a book on the internet in this digital library. For example, they could read a book about a dolphin with a blue cover. They really liked the book and wanted to buy it. How can they find the book? They might not remember the title or author, but they could remember the book had a blue cover.

Kids can write reviews about books. It is very interesting to read these reviews. I really enjoyed reading the profiles of the reviewers because you can find out more information about them. Most of them completed the sentence for "If I could change my school library media center I would....".

Why do nonprofits not blog?

There was a comment in an interview on Netsquared that nonprofits that do not blog are not serious about finding new ways to engage people.

I have been thinking alot about this comment and the more I think about, the more I get upset.

Why?

I am trying to find a web position at a nonprofit. I have learned from an e-mail list that I am on that alot of nonprofits do not have time to do everything they would like to do with technology.

I know this is true for small nonprofits. One person has so many responsibilities that they can not take on more tasks. Maybe they would like to have a blog, but where are they going to find the time to create one and keep it updated?

I am not sure if the same thing applies to larger nonprofits. But if it does not, the only thing I can think of is that they do not know how a blog can help their organization. I hope through Netsquared these nonprofits will be able to learn how blogging and other new technologies can help them.