An Ars Technica article listed on Digg entitled “The ‘Google generation’ not so hot at Googling, after all” (Anderson, 2008) attracted my attention. The “Google generation” refers to people born since 1993, who are coming of age in a world dominated by the web. The Ars Technica article tended to focus on the characteristics of the Google generation, while the study it refers to, “Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future” (University College London CIBER Group, 2008), also concerns itself with the fate of research libraries and librarians and their expert curatorship in the face of unlimited choice on the internet (the study was co-commissioned by the British Library).

This young generation tends to start information searches from popular search engines, like Google, instead of starting from a library’s online site – it doesn’t even occur to them to start at a library site; they seem to be unaware that libraries have massive digital resources, databases and access to content electronically. Libraries are simply not meeting the demands of searchers/researchers; as a result, they are being bypassed to a greater or lesser extent, especially by this young generation. Libraries are having a great deal of trouble making the change from being a physical place to 24/7 online space, but it is critical that they do so – the fate of the library as an institution may be at stake. As the study says, the “business case for libraries” is beginning to look weak, because they are in danger of becoming totally irrelevant and unused (University College London CIBER Group, 2008, p. 30).

The study recommends that library services become more “e-consumer-friendly” and integrate their content with commercial search engines as much as possible (University College London CIBER Group, 2008, p. 33). Barriers to access of any kind, even requiring an additional username and password, “are too high for most consumers” – information behind those barriers will not be accessed (University College London CIBER Group, 2008, p. 30). Additionally, libraries and policy makes need to study their users more thoroughly – although this study is a start, in general the research literature is scant.

The most important finding for librarians about the people in the Google generation is that these young people are not the web whiz kids of popular wisdom. They are not expert searchers – they could benefit enormously from the information experts working at research libraries, but libraries must find ways to reach out and become more accessible. The Google generation’s search habits tend to be “horizontal” and not deep – they skim pages and skip from page to page quickly. They download a lot of PDFs, but don’t read them. Google-generation searchers find information quickly, but its value and accuracy vary wildly. In addition, they may not have developed search strategies that yield the best results (University College London CIBER Group, 2008, p. 10).

The study also briefly considers whether social network sites (SNS) could improve libraries’ relations with young people. It mentions that some librarians have started MySpace and Facebook pages in an effort to create a presence on SNS. However, available survey data suggest that these efforts may not pay off – it may be that young people see libraries are being not cool enough to rightfully hang out on these sites, and they resent the “intrusion” into their space (University College London CIBER Group, 2008, p. 17).

References
Anderson, N. (2008, January). The “Google generation” not so hot at Googling, after all. Ars Technica.

University College London (UCL) CIBER Group. (2008). Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future (CIBER Briefing paper; 9). London.