Societal Changes and Libraries: the JISC Report

In January 2008, the British Library and JISC issued the results of a study that was intended to gather and assess the available evidence to establish whether or not, the `Google generation’ are searching for and researching content in new ways and whether new ways of researching content will prove to be any different from the ways that existing researchers and scholars carry out their work. Some of the key findings include:

• About 60% of e-journal users view no more than three pages and 65% never return.
• Most people on the web spend as much time searching as they do viewing actual content. They spend little time on sites for e-books (4 minutes) and e-journals (8 minutes), and they browse titles, contents pages, abstracts, but do not read in the traditional sense.
• Academic users squirrel away content in free downloads, but there is no evidence that most of the downloads are actually ever read.
• One size does not fit all. User behavior is very diverse by geography, gender, type of university, and status at the university.
• Users assess authority and trust within seconds, and they dip and cross-check sites and relying upon favored brands.
• Librarians need a much better understanding of how people actually search virtual libraries and use content. The report states that “there is a real danger that the library professional will swept aside by history.”

Source

• CIBER. Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future. British Library and JISC, January 2008.

This page is part of the Environmental Scan, one of NELINET's Planning, Assessment & Accreditation Initiatives.