Prognosticating on the Google Generation

A new report on the 'Google Generation' is out, titled, "Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future." The report contains the results of a study commissioned by the JISC and the British Library on how children and young adults will interact with information resources over the next five to ten years.

It is hard to take any definitive research results from this paper, because it is a melding of a massive literature review focused on several different areas of information literacy and information use over the last fifty years, combined with a '"deep log analysis" (their words) of BL Learning. (And the research that is there is cited in an odd manner, not actually referencing specific data.) In other words, there is not much original research here on the order of what you would find in the most recent OCLC reports or the Pew reports. That said, there are some interesting conclusions and projections at the end of the report (mostly based on their wide-ranging review of the existing literature, it seems.)

The report brings forth the following recommendations for maintaining academic libraries' future online relevance:

--They (libraries) need to make their sites more highly visible in cyberspace by opening them up to search engines.

They should abandon any hope of being a one-stop shop.

They should accept that much content will seldom or never be used, other than perhaps a place from which to bounce.

Possibly the most compelling part of the report came on the last page:

The library profession desperately needs leadership to develop a new vision for the 21st century and reverse its declining profile and influence. This should start with effecting that shift from a content-orientation to a user-facing perspective and then on to an outcome focus.

This idea was recently echoed in the ACRL Environmental Scan, which discussed moving from "the creation and management of large on-site library collections to the design and delivery of library services." (p. 5)

This also supports the notion of the library's primary role as campus partner in developing and implementing information literacy learning outcomes in University curriculum and graduation requirements.