OUseful Info

Google Generation JISC Report

Although I try not to go in for "you've seen it elsewhere, but anyway" posts, I can't not mention the recently released Google Generation report, which tries to get a handle on the information skills that the post-1993 generation have acquired.

I'm not sure how they've acquired this skills, though? From tinkering, presumably? I'm not sure the kids are doing much in the way of search skills development in school, and I suspect that many librarians would rather try to get people to use their arcane systems rather than help people use Google better, at least in the first instance...

the key point is that information skills have to be developed during formative school years [slide 24]

It's a bit like the language librarian refusing to let you read foreign classics in anything other than the original language: "Not only can't we read a recently translated novel with a sense of how the foreign work draws on its native traditions, but uneven translation patterns can all too easily harden into misleading cultural stereotypes." Words without Borders: How to read a translation.

That is: "Not only can't we do a search in Google with a sense of how an original article fits into peer-reviewed academic discourse, but Google's index anything policy can all too easily beguile the reader into succumbing to misplaced authority."

But for most people, the original language is inaccessible. I'd probably even have trouble reading Asterix in the original French... So I read the English version...

So - "what do we know about young people's information behaviour?" (slide 13 of the Google Generation Final Keynote presentation):

Seeing this, my first thought was: "so how old are the people teaching the upcoming generation their information skills?" Which prompted the language librarian thought...

Secondary school science doesn't teach string theory (I don't think...?!). It may not even cover the equations relating to simple harmonic motion any may (too much calculus). And not everyone studies physics at school anyway... Kids in school won't be covering Proquest (I suspect...). But what are they doing?

Students usually approach their research without regard to the library's structure or the way that library segments different resources into different areas of its web site. Library web sites often reflect an organizational view of the library ... they do not do a particularly good job of aggregating content on a particular subject area.
...
Children (especially) tend to make very narrow relevance judgements by considering the presence or absence of words exactly describing the search topic: as a result they miss many relevant documents and end up repeating searches.

If you haven't done so already, read Everything is Miscellaneous, or at least listen to a talk about it.

As to looking for keywords users searched with - I suspect this is in part down to the application of a naive but understandable relevancy heuristic (so some skill is being applied, then...;-)

... they exhibit a strong preference for expressing themselves in natural language rather than analysing which key words might be more effective

As search interfaces get better, the user-perception of appropriateness and relevancy will change. For example, I suspect we'll go through a phase of ubiquitous clustering interfaces (see Clusty for an example, though all the search engines are experimenting with similar things) and this will help give the user confidence that returned results are relevant even if the search terms aren't prominent...

One of the problems of doing keyword searching well is knowing waht the keywords are. Clustering can help in this respect - a poorly phrased natural language search can be used to discover clusters which might help identify more appropriate keywords. The identified clusters may thus be able to help educate, and guide, the user.

... the future is now, not ten years away...

Google is innovating all the time - as are it's competitors; and Amazon too ("'books' are still the primary library brand association for this group, despite massive investment in digital resources, of which students are largely unfamiliar"). So how's your OPAC and federated search programme coming along?

PS In the 'authority' stakes, librarians tend to claim the high ground insofar as information provision grows. Compare this to the kids' behaviour:

One area of current interest, and, indeed, concern, is the way young people evaluate - or rather fail to evaluate - information from electronic sources. [slide 23]

Hmm - so looking at Nature Commentary: A Tale of Two Citations, are the librarians complicit in what I guess amounts to something tantamout to fraud(?!), are they in favour of plagiarism, or are their quality filters broken? I suspect many kids can pick up that a blog is a splog (err, that's spam blog ;-). So how come the library can't pick up on a spam journal articles and put filters in place to "protect us" from them?;-)

PPS If you're looking for an info skills course for 6th Formers, the OU Beyond Google information skills course is available via the Young Applicants in Schools Scheme (YASS)

PPPS Another reason why formal publishing often sucks, actually, compared to link fuelled blog posts: Mythbusting the ‘Google generation’ report

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Tags: library2.0, elibrary, JISC, Google Generation, CIBER

Posted by ajh59 at January 28, 2008 11:32 AM