Friday, January 18, 2008

Our work is not yet done, folks. The British Library has a link to a report titled: Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future on their site: http://www.bl.uk/news/2008/pressrelease20080116.html . Quote from the British Library press release:

"A new study overturns the common assumption that the ‘Google Generation' – youngsters born or brought up in the Internet age – is the most web-literate. The first ever virtual longitudinal study carried out by the CIBER research team at University College London claims that, although young people demonstrate an apparent ease and familiarity with computers, they rely heavily on search engines, view rather than read and do not possess the critical and analytical skills to assess the information that they find on the web. "

The direct link to the report is: http://www.bl.uk/news/pdf/googlegen.pdf . You may have suspected such findings, if you have had any contact at all with students from elementary up to and including graduate level studies. As these are our future sources of revenue, be it taxes or direct pay, we as librarians need to evolve and adapt to them, or schedule one whale of a retraining effort. As for me, I am betting on adaptation and evolution.
(Thanks to Siobhan Champ-Blackwell at Creighton for calling this to my attention -th)

1 comment:

Jeanne said...

Teri--This is a great post. It reminded me of something a student said to me a few years ago. I was teaching journalism at a community college, here in Washington, and my students had to do research and work it into their articles.

So I was seeing all sorts of unatributed information--which is a big NO in journalism--and I would ask them where the info came from.

The answer (with a big smile)?: The Internet.

I spent months trying to show them that the Web itself was not a source, and that you had to evaluate the credibility of any source you wanted to use...but I'm not sure if I got through.

So one of my slogans as a teacher, even now, is: "The Internet is not a source."

Jeanne