Information Behaviors of Children and Adolescent's Interaction with Print and Digital Books

This research is dedicated to assessing information behaviors of children and adolescents’ interaction with print and digital books. To reach this goal، digital books of Iranian virtual library for children and teenagers، have been used as sources of research. The purpose is assessing the influence of participants’ gender، age and graphical effects of books، with their preference in choosing type of books. A mixed method was used; qualitative method to investigate the information behaviors and quantitative statistics to answer some of questions. Samples were selected based on members’ availability، which ultimately thirty-two of them have been chosen equally between boys and girls. Data were collected using observation and semi-structured interviews and recording speech data. The findings showed that %70 prefer print format to digital one. The gender of children and graphic effects of books did not influence on members in choosing the format. As children age، their desire in choosing print type gets stronger، while younger children approach digital book as entertainment. Print books caused more enthusiasm in children to continue reading. It seems that browsing print books is much easier and pleasant for children than digital books. Print books are least succeptable to distractive factors، thus، they are more suitable for long reading.