I seem to be following a theme today. Sometimes that’s because my research projects direct me into a specific area and as I gather the data, I continue to pay attention to new developments for an indefinite period of time. I never know when I might find that perfect gem of a report that will provide the needed answer.
So today I read a Knowledge@Wharton release related to Social Networking. Apparently the recent Supernova conference in San Fransicso provided a great overview of the structure of web users, the new applications for social software and a not so surprising prediction about web evolvement.
One interesting note captured my attention.
Conference presenter Eszter Hargittai, Northwestern University professor of sociology and communication studies, studied a diverse group of students attending the University of Illinois at Chicago and found that 43% failed on a search task, based largely on their misunderstanding of Internet terminology and on their inability to navigate links.
Hargittai reviewed research showing that people differ significantly in their understanding of various Internet-related terms and activities. For example, when asked to assess their own Internet know-how, women, African Americans, Hispanics and those with poorly educated parents report lower levels of knowledge than men or Asian Americans.”
Librarians have been discussing the user’s inability to properly use the Internet for locating and evaluating information for quite some time. Now analysts are commenting upon the reality and bringing a hierarchy to the users of the net.
Academic librarians focus on Information Literacy, law librarians continually train on legal research methods and sources. While Google exec, Joe Kraus predicts the ongoing evolution of the web to become entirely social, I predict that training will continue to be important when trying to find the usable, verifiable information necessary for quality research whether the data is a part of the static or social web.
