The 'Google generation' are defined as those people born in or after 1993, who cannot remember life before the world wide web. They will be hitting universities in three years time.
In 2007 JISC and the British Library funded the
Google Generation research project to identify the implications for university libraries of the imminent arrival of a generation who for their whole life have needed to do nothing more to retreive information than to type some words into the blank Google search box.
The report came out with a stark message for university libraries. Never mind the Google generation - the current generation of students and researchers have just as strong a preference for using Google and the web in place of using the catalague and the library.
This Thursday I attended a seminar run by CILIP's Information Services Group entitled
The digital consumer: our customers of the future
. The seminar explored the report's
finding that:
Libraries could be "swept aside by history" if they continue to fall behind the internet in addressing the changing demands of researchers and students
The findings of the Google Generation report
The first speaker was one of the co-authors of the report:
Dr Ian Rowlands.
He explained how the report had found no evidence that the Google generation is qualitatively different in its information habits than those in older age groups. Only a minority of the Google generation live up to the stereotype that they are constantly on-line and are highly tech savvy. Most of the rest take a pragmatic approach to web 2 (using it when it serves a purpose). Another group are 'digital dissidents' tending to dislike or shun it.
His description of the google generation tallies with my experiences of colleagues of all ages in most of the organisations I work with:
- a minority love web 2 and will be blogging or twittering or on Facebook every day
- the majority will use it for specific purposes (e.g. accessing a blog about a topic they are interested in)
- another minority won't touch web 2 with a bargepole.
The report found that the main difference with the google generation and those older than them is that because of their stage of life they have more time on their hands to use web 2 and the internet, and they have less pre-conceived opinions about information sources.
The good news that the next generation of library customer is not an alien species brought little comfort to the assembled librarians because Ian rang out some sharp warnings:
- The Google generation is not good at framing precise searches, and does not use advanced search facilities. But current students, the middle aged and the old are exactly the same! This is a big worry for libraries because these are precisely the skills students need in order to derive the most benefit from library resources
- Students prefer convenience to quality when it comes to information. Ian often asks his students: what is more important to you, ease of access to information or the quality of the information content? They always answer ease of access. This is worrying for libraries because their unique selling proposition over the web is that information in libraries is of a higher quality.
- Students are not attracted by good information architecture. Ian was asked by a publishing company to run a workshop with PhD students to explore how they wanted the publishers e-resources site to be structured. They said they did not want clouds of meta-tags or faceted classification, they just wanted a simple search box like Google.
The Google generation are no different from current students and researchers and the rest of population. The mismatch of running information architecture centric libraries for information architecture phobic users is not a problem that will arrive further down the track, it is a problem for all libraries now, whatever audience they serve.
The challenges for digital libraries in the web 2 world
In theory digital libraries are a solution to the problem of providing the population of a university with convenient access to high quality information.
In practice Ian said that digital libraries in universities were threatened by a lack of usage and by the risk that publishers will provide researchers with direct access to e-resources - bypassing the University library.
Ian ascribed the cause of the under-usage to the fact that students and researchers have difficulty in forming a mental map of the scope, structure and contents of a digital library. They don't distinguish the contents of the digital library from the big pile of information that is the world wide web.
Ian urged librarians to do more to help people understand what is in the digital library, what makes it different and special. He was disappopinted with the home page of the UCL digital library which simply offers users a choice of 'e-books' 'e-journals' and 'other repository materials'. This distinction based on the format of information makes sense in terms of the way that librarians process their stock, but it doesn't relate to the reasons why students and researchers consult the digital library and it doesn't convey any sense of the rich array of resources available within the digital library.
Ian believes that initiatives of publishers threaten to encroach on the space occupied by digital libraries. Publishers can take on libraries because of the content they possess. They have also put more time and money into understanding the information habits of the university community than librarians have. Elsevier are planning an e-information resource that aims to meet the information needs of researchers whilst they are doing their research, in the hope that the researchers will publish their papers with them at the end of the research.
Teaching information literacy in the web 2 age
Peter Godwin is Academic liaison librarian at the University of Bedfordshire. He writes a smashing
blog on information literacy, and he spoke to us about how he goes about giving students at the university the information skills they need to prosper in the web 2 age.
He criticised the bulk of information literacy training given by university librarians for over-concentrating on search. The reason for the focus on search was that the librarians wanted students to use their library databases. Students don't need to think like librarians (that won't make them rich! quipped Peter) they need to know how to collaborate, synthesize and adapt.
Peter talked us through Sconul's
seven pillars of information literacy. To Peter the most important information literacy skill for students to acquire is the ability to evaluate and compare sources of information.
Peter says that web 2 rewards people who are willing to experiment and try things (it is not as well-suited to perfectionists). So his teaching method involves encouraging students to engage with these tools. He doesn't just teach them how wikipedia works and what its strengthts and weaknesses are, he encourages them to go to a topic they know a lot about and add to the wikipedia entry. He doesn't just teach them about the nature of blogs and how to follow them with an RSS reader, he gets them to consider whether writing their own blog would help them in their studies.
The University of Bedfordshire have set up a 'Course Feed' feature, that allows students them to view within Facebook information about their course drawn from the Universities Virtual Learning Environment system.
Juanita Foster-Jones is a librarian at the Open University. She descibed how she has collaborated with academic colleagues to put together two information literacy courses that the OU offers to members of the public. The first is '
Beyond Google: working with information online' an undergraduate course. A second course is being launched this December. Putting the course together enhanced the status of the library within the University and got them working with academics as well as for them.
The use of web 2 and the web by the British Library (BL)
Clive Izard is head of creative services at the BL. His aim is to use web 2 and the web to create connections between the experience of people visiting the Library's reading rooms, its exhibitions and its website.
He spoke in particular about two projects:
-
Turning pages 2 is aimed at overcoming the difficulty of exhibiting rare books. You have to put a glass case between the visitor and the book, you can't let them touch it and you can only show 2 pages at a time. BL wanted a software programme capable of taking images of individual pages and binding them into a virtual book. They wanted the software to enable users to interact with the book: to rotate it; turn the pages; magnify text and pictures; click for notes, translations and further links. To achieve this BL partnered with Microsoft. Both parties benefited from the partnership: Microsoft got a flagship project that they used to launch Vista. BL got to retain the intellectual property in software that they can use again and again, and that they have provided to other libraries to use with their collections. Clive showed us the Turning Pages rendition of a William Blake Notebook. The stunning look and feel of the virtual book combined with the beauty of Blake's artwork took my breath away.
- Visitors to the Taking Liberties exhibition are given an anonymous citizen number and invited to give their views in response to questions at various points around the exhibition. The questions hit on controversial topics such as 42 day detention. Visitors to the website are given the same questions. Visitors to the exhibition are fed information on how people on the website are voting on the questions and vica versa. Both sets of visitors are given an individual reading of where their views stand on a continuum between control and freedom. You can start the questions at home and finish them on the web or do it the other way round.
BL are using web 2 technologies to make their own web site more participative. But they also want to enable people to access BL collections without having to come to the BL web site. so they contribute photos to flickr, videos to You Tube, and have contributed to Facebook.
Clive says that the main driver behind software and technology change now is the consumer market not the organisational market (think of the iPhone). Technology change is so rapid that things look old hat after 18 months. The BL can't hope to develop new technology in-house, it needs to partner with companies that specialise in this field. Luckily because the BL has rich content that is not currently available on the net the big boys like Google and Microsoft are willing to work with the BL on favourable terms.
Post seminar thoughts
Cilip's HQ is nestled in the heart of Bloomsbury, tucked in between the
tech shops of Tottenham Court Road and the teach shops of UCL and the
University of London. After the conference I popped into the
The Building Centre
on Store Street: an exhibition area and bookshop that promotes new
architecture. I saw an architectural magazine with the
headline 'if you want to change the world, don't build anything'. The
headline referred to an architecture firm who only build buildings as a
last resort. When a client issues a brief they use their knowledge of
how to manipulate and use space to explore and propose options which don't involve
new construction.
I was struck by the parallels with the debates I had just heard: speaker after speaker had explored ways of enabling people to benefit from the skills and knowledge of librarians without requiring them to visit a physical or digital library.
James Lappin
It's a year since Jacky Berry left TFPL to become the Librarian at the 
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