Friday, January 18, 2008

Report on the Information Behavior of the Researcher of the Future

No comments :
I know you are all scouring the web for good reading material for the weekend and your first stop was here (ha!). So this will probably be good weekend reading if you are interested in the topic of Search as it relates to research. i just browsed through it and saved it to my 'to read weekend' list so i will update this post with my thoughts after reading in-depth.

Via Techmeme, a pointer to the Arstechnica blog which posts about a new briefing report on the habits of the 'Google' generation titled "Information Behavior of the Researcher of the Future".

Information Professionals, have been discussing this topic for a while especially in the corporate research space when users are given access to specialized databases. Although Google has done a lot to make everyone a 'searcher'- i am not convinced that it makes people good searchers and especially not good researchers. But that is really not Google's 'fault'. Google can be a sophisticated search engine if for example the advanced features are used- users are just not trained to take advantage of them. They can certainly try to educate users- for example working with Libraries to provide teaching resources where early search education takes place.

I would read it right now but lunch time is over and i have some work to do before this evening so i can enjoy myself at the Crunchies which by the way you may also be able to view via video stream this evening.

Image: from Arstechnica post but is actually the cover page of the report.

No comments :