Sharpening those Google Skills

What are We Teaching the Children?

In what is proving a wake-up call for libaries, Dr Ian Rowlands and his colleagues at the Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research (Ciber), based at University College London's centre for publishing, examined research literature on the information-seeking behaviour of the virtual scholar - and combined this with an analysis of the use made of British Library and Joint Information Systems Committee (Jisc) websites.

The report, Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future, found users "power-browsing" or skimming material, using "horizontal" (shallow) research. Most spent only a few minutes looking at academic journal articles and few returned to them. "It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense," said the report authors.

But this behaviour was not restricted to "screenagers". "From undergraduates to professors, people exhibit a strong tendency towards shallow, horizontal, flicking behaviour in digital libraries. Factors specific to the individual, personality and background are much more significant than generation."

Further on:

Rowlands suggests in his study that schools are failing to equip students for independent online study. Academics and librarians are debating nationally and internationally whether students should be taught information literacy as a separate , accredited, skill - as occurs in some American institutions. Or whether it would be better to teach them to navigate virtual libraries within their main subject based studies - an approach favoured by many information specialists.

This all makes perfect sense. The very nature of using search engines like Google ingrain a kind skimming approach. Most students are not given even simple tools like a knowledge of Boolean searches or simple common sense rule that beginning small works best when starting out. They are not machines of precision. They stake a claim on sheer volume of information stored in their databases, the indexes are there but they do not work in a sense of a index in a book.

As I remarked previously in another post, I am working on a book. I did most of my research in the old old old school of using books. My sources were rare and often out of print works that in most cases if even available on line would be so for a price.

Students of all ages need to learn to make independent assessments of the quality of material by looking at the authors' experience, funders, use of sources, and where published.

Duh! Haven't librarians been pointing this out to educators since computers first appear in schools, libraries, and homes?

The boon of a great information exchange comes at the price of responsibility. The scenario is not that much different than that of a timid student walking into a large library and being overwhelmed by the card catalog and stacks of books around them.

I have said before that librarians should be teaching courses in grammar school on searching on-line. Like math and science, these are essential skills for any student to have.

I hope that politicians and civic leaders will get behind schools in helping them to fund this kind of education. Remember, you have to pay for this too.

Any thoughts?

Here is a link to the full story.

http://education.guardian.co.uk/librariesunleashed/story/0,,2274796,00.html