This came in this morning from Gary Price over at Resourcesshelf.com:
"Google Generation" is a Myth, Says New Research
Google is in the title but that’s an attention grabber. The primary focus of the report is about younger people and access to info."A new report, commissioned by JISC and the British Library, counters the common assumption that the Google Generation — young people born or brought up in the Internet age – is the most adept at using the web."
The report, which Gary links to in his post, is worth a good, long look, especially if you are wondering why your bibliographic database instruction sessions don’t go quite the way you hoped more often that you’d like. The reason why kids today don’t do much better at database searching than anyone else is a complicated one, but if I had to make a snap guess I’d say because kids today (in my experience, of course, as everything on this blog is in my experience) don’t generally have much in the way of programming skills, or very much skill with systems analysis, logic, deductive reasoning, or–perhaps especially–curiosity about how the darned thing works.
There’s more to be said about this–a lot more, and I’d like to come up with a more substantial post regarding the whirlwind that’s spinning around my brain right now–but read the report first. Two things strike me as being worthy of further discussion: first, why some knowledge of cataloging can make a real difference in crafting top notch search strategies, and second, why ease of use does not necessarily imply usefulness. More on those topic (I hope) tomorrow.
Anyway, read the report. Enjoy!
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