The undergraduate students coming through LJMU (particularly those in level one and our future undergraduates) are fully paid-up members of the so-called 'digital generation'. Strange as it is for those born before 1989, the digital generation have never known life without the Internet or the web. Bizarre, isn't it?! Perhaps more derogatively, these digital kids have been labelled – perhaps justifiably – as the 'Google Generation'; kids that rely on a single search engine to satisfy their information needs, a search engine that is incapable of tapping a 'deep web' six times the size of the surface web. These are the kids that are incapable of engaging in critical research proficiently, apparently.
Such users have been known to the library, computer and information science fields for some time as the 'satisfied inept' – another pejorative label for the kids. All this negative labelling of 'the kids' does get depressing though. The Google Generation may therefore be pleased to learn that recently published research indicates the Google Generation is now being replaced by a wider 'Google Society'.
Funded by the JISC and the British Library, the respected CIBER research team at University College London note that despite student familiarity with IT, most rely on the most basic search tools and lack some of the most basic analytical skills required to evaluate and retrieve information on the web. No surprise there. However, the research report ('Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future') also found that research-behaviour traits commonly associated with the digital generation (e.g. intolerance of remotely sluggish information retrieval systems, impatience with navigational systems, reluctance to use alternative - but more effective - search tools, etc.) are now typical among all age groups. The report makes all sorts of recommendations, including urgent government action with respect to information literacy and for digital libraries to up their game (which I think many are doing…).
This is all interesting stuff and echoes some of what Bill Thompson noted recently on Leading Edge, and which was commented upon on this blog. But returning the focus back to the digital generation (or Google Generation), my experience of undergraduate students is that many of them – even the 'techies' – not only lack information literacy skills, but actually lack familiarity with IT, even with humdrum applications like MS Office. This phenomenon is highlighted in the CIBER report, with student familiarity of Internet Explorer and MS Word at 100%, but knowledge of spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, etc. very low – and these are just basic everyday applications. Am I isolated in my experience with students? Should the urgent government action with respect to information literacy also include more emphasis on the ICT literacy we thought already existed?
Shifting back again to the 'satisfied inept' theme (did we ever leave?!), the most interesting research paper I read that encountered this phenomenon was by Barnum et al. (2004) when exploring the effectiveness of back-of-book indexes in information retrieval within e-books. They evaluated a version of Adobe Acrobat Reader e-Book utilising an index with the locators hyperlinked to the page reference for each entry. They then compared this to an alternative version of the same e-book. The difference with the latter version was that it didn't include an index but relied on the full-text search capabilities provided by Acrobat Reader. Barnum et al. derived extremely interesting results. Users found more relevant information, more quickly and efficiently, using the index than they did using free-text searching; however, when asked which they prefer, the users said 'free-text' searching. When told they performed better with the index (mainly due to difficulties with query formulation), they still said that they would continue to use free-text searching. How frustrating is that?
Like CIBER say, urgent information literacy skills is clearly necessary for the Google Society; however, for the Google Generation currently working their way through university now, the carrots need to be made a lot more attractive. We have to coax students out of their habitual and almost ritualistic use of the major search engines, just enough so that they can appreciate what they've been missing since they were born. To that end, perhaps the use of a big stick might be better?!
