It turns out that the Pew Internet and American Life Project sort of keeps a blog. Here are some points from a November 2004 post by project director Lee Rainie regarding “surprising, strange, and wonderful data:”

• The vast majority of most Internet users (80%) and many non-users (about 40%) expect that they will be able to find reliable information online when it comes to news, health care information, e-commerce, and government. They also report they would turn first to the internet when they have questions about health, news, government resources, and products. (Source: Survey September 2002) [emphasis added]
   
• A third of online adults and a fifth of online teens say they use the internet to get information that is sensitive or embarrassing to discuss with another person.
   
• As they gain more experience online, Americans become more serious in their internet use. Over time, they use the internet more for work, they spend more money on e-commerce, banking, and auctions, they pursue more activities, and they are more likely to use emails to for serious purposes such as expressing worries or seeking advice. (Source: Survey March 2001)
   
• Between 30%-40% of internet users begin their hunt for health information, government services and political information using a search engine. (Source: Multiple surveys 2002-2003)

The above findings seem to scare many librarians, but I claim they suggest a bright future for libraries. Think about it, these folks probably would never have thought to use a library for these questions anyway, but search engines and the internet give us a way to reach them even when they aren’t specifically thinking of using our services.

The real risk, and the reason we have to move quickly to recognize these trends and serve these users is in this point:

• Three-quarters of those who get health information online do not regularly check the source, sponsorship or timeliness of the material they find online. (Source: Survey June-August 2001).

libraries, library, search engines, patron behavior, internet use, search engine use, web searching, online behavior, pew internet project, pip, pew internet

According to the recently released Pew Internet report on online activities:

On an average day, about 94 million American adults use the internet; 77% will use email, 63% will use a search engine.

Among all the online activities tracked, including chatting and IMing, reading blogs or news, banking, and buying, not one of them includes searching a library OPAC.

tags: google, google vs. the opac, libraries, library, library catalog, opac, pew internet, pew internet and american life project, report, search engine, search engines

Jenny Levine alerted me to the Pew Internet & American Life Project report on teens as both content creators and consumers.

It turns out that teens, and teen girls especially, are highly active online IMing, sharing photos, blogging, reading and commenting on other’s blogs, and gaming. An especially strong trend in this group is the use of web technologies for collaboration. Interactivity, increasingly, is being defined by the teen’s ability to ask questions, comment, or contribute. Take a look at this quote, (found via this BBC report):

These teens would say that the companies that want to provide them entertainment and knowledge should think of their relationship with teens as one where they are in a conversational partnership, rather than in a strict producer-consumer, arms-length relationship.

Jenny calls this the “4Cs,” for conversation, community, commons, and collaboration. Clearly, services that allow those 4Cs are preferred over those that don’t. Competitively, where do you stand? How well have you embraced the 4Cs in your online services.

tags: 4cs, collaboration, commons, community, conversation, interactivity, internet, jenny levine, pew internet, pew internet & american life project, pew internet project, social internet, social software, social web, teenagers, teens, youth