Challenging assumptions: 2.0

You may be aware of the great Library Juice blog, I ventured over there recently and a post last week got my attention on challenging some of our web/library 2.0 assumptions.

Rory Litwin, who runs the site, gives us the example of two recently published studies on undergraduate research behaviour. The first was conducted on University of Rochester students by anthropologist Nancy Foster. She found that the assumption that modern scholars will be in-sync with net-tech to be a misnomer.

The results at University of Rochester study show that even though the subjects were all scholars, they can be as split in their technical abilities as with any other groups; some embrace and are apt at using new tech whilst others were not. Litwin mentions the study even shows a sizeable amount of undergraduates are “technologically inept”.

The second piece of research on undergraduate guinea pigs comes from Alison Head and is entitled Beyond Google: How Students Conduct Academic Research. This study examined how humanities students conducted their research and found that rather than rely on Google and questionable academic sources like Wikipedia, students adopted a hybrid method of researching. A tiny minority (Wikipedia 3%, Search Engine 13%) went straight to the outside web, while the majority used library sources; especially its website (23%). Aggregated research resources which had been recommended by the library or their tutors were significant information sources for the students (Course reading 40%). You may feel encouraged that the students placed their trust with the professionals over anonymous online sources.

I would however encourage you to have a look at the rest of Litwin’s post. He goes on to quote a stinging response by Mark Rosenzweig, Councilor at Large of the American Library Association (ALA) to Laura Cohen’s very cheery Library 2.0 Manifesto, published in the latest American Libraries.

Both make good reading, both make notable points, clearly both authors care very much about the role and importance of The Library. I do wonder though why the debate on 2.0 has to sometimes be so polarised.