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Last Saturday at the ALA Conference I attended a session sponsored by Serials Solutions.  They brought in a speaker from EDUCAUSE to discuss the millennials and their research habits.  Carie Page, a millennial herself, did a fantastic job summarizing some interesting points.  Many of her points can be found in the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research study from 2009 titled, The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology.  Some highlights from Carie’s presentation included:

Students:

• learn by running searches online (scanning the results) and want information before it is produced
• want YouTube videos on nearly every topic.
• will write their entire paper from online sources but use the library for getting the required citations (how many times have you helped students with this at the ref desk?)
• have difficulty finding/determining the original source of information and don’t know how to weight resources.
• want easy ways in (one box) and single access points or portals (think discovery tools)
• want more mobile ready sites from their university
• decipher available tools using peer feedback, sharing their own experiences and getting reviews.  Carie showed an example of a young woman who would only purchase a sweater from a popular retailer if her online connections would post comments on the shade of pink.  Apparently she’d been burned by the pink color in the past.

Carie also said that less than 50% of student are using video and other creation tools, but those who do (reference to online cult) mix and create content at will and assume all information is free and available to use.

So, what’s a library to do?  Carie suggested:

• creative discovery of content
• bringing content expertise closer to students (embedding, integrating, breaking down resources and services)
• find students who can teach other students about library resources and services
• offer rental/loan of devices (ebook readers, cameras, video cameras, software)
• use location aware devices…lost in the stacks?  how can they find the nearest staff person
• and the bottom line…..TALK TO STUDENTS….find out what they want, need, and will use and go with it

This entry was posted on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 3:09 pm and is filed under In the News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.