A recent Chronicle of Higher Education article summarizes the findings of a British study conducted by the Joint Information Systems Committee that studied the information seeking habits of those born after 1993.  Some of the key highlights of this report:

  • Young people don’t develop good search strategies to find quality information.
  • They might find information on the Internet quickly, but they don’t know how to evaluate the quality of what they find.
  • They don’t understand what the Internet really is: a vast network with many different content providers.

The report also addresses the implications and challenges for the future role of libraries and librarians.  To review the full report, click here.  Please post your comments and let us know what you think.

Published by Denise Woetzel

One thought on “Information Seeking Behavior of the “Google Generation””

  1. This quote from the report is particularly telling, both in terms of searcher behavior and librarian response:

    In general terms, this new form of information seeking
    behaviour can be characterised as being horizontal,
    bouncing, checking and viewing in nature. Users are
    promiscuous, diverse and volatile and it is clear that
    these behaviours represent a serious challenges for
    traditional information providers, nurtured in a hardcopy
    paradigm and, in many respects, still tied to it.
    Libraries must move away from bean counting
    dubious download statistics, and get much closer to
    monitoring the actual information seeking behaviour of
    their users. (p. 9)

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