JISC

The University College London (UCL) CIBER group will be conducting a study for the JISC and the British Library to investigate how the Google generation searches for information and the implications for the country's major research collections. The study will try to address the following questions:

• whether or not as a result of the digital transition and resources being created digitally, young people, the 'Google generation', are searching for and researching content in new ways and if so, how this will shape the way they research and search in the future
• whether or not new ways of searching and researching for content will prove to be any different from the way that existing researchers/scholars work

The project comprises 3 main activities. The CIBER team will examine library and information science literature published over the past 30 years, including a 20-year long survey into the research behaviour of academics as they get older. Secondly, they will analyse web logs of 2 online services from the BL and JISC to ascertain whether people of a variety of ages interact with them differently. Finally, a panel of industrial and technology experts will help to assess the strategic implications of the findings from the 2 main studies for information experts, national libraries and policy makers.