The research skills killer

Widening access to technology has not improved the information literacy of young people

Digital media’s ease of use hides some very worrying trends. For example, the speed at which young people conduct web searches means they spend little time evaluating information for accuracy or authority. They also appear to have little understanding of their information needs and so find it difficult to develop what information professionals would see as effective search strategies.

This is the sobering assessment made by the British Library and JISC’s cIber research study to discover whether the Google generation (defined as those born after 1993) are searching for content in effective new ways as a result of the sheer amount of information and resources that are held digitally.

Worryingly endemic among young users of technology (although surely not exclusive to them) is a propensity to bounce or flick across digital and internet resources. It’s a practice that turns people into viewers rather than readers, and few are persistent enough and equipped to go deep rather than wide. Many have little understanding of the internet as a collection of networked resources from a range of providers. Rather, they see the internet as Google or Yahoo.

A key question is whether those of the Google generation who become searchers and academics will persist with these behaviours. And the answer is… nobody knows.

Information skills are needed more than ever, and such skills need to be ingrained during childhood. But don’t expect any real help from the government on pushing information skills up an already hideously overcrowded national curriculum. By the time students are at college, their ingrained habits ­ notably, an uncritical trust in branded search engines to deliver quick fixes ­ will be irreversible. And if that’s the case, research libraries are in danger of becoming irrelevant and redundant.
peter.williams@incisivemedia.com