The Researcher of the future

How will the researcher of the future behave?  This question is being addressed by the British Library, in collaboration with JISC, through a recently-commissioned study aimed at identifying how researchers will access and interact with digital resources in five to ten years time.  Much has been said and written about the behaviour of the ‘Google generation’ and the effects of web-based social networking in all its guises, but this piece of work seems to be a serious attempt to analyse "whether today?s young people, who have grown up in an immersive IT environment with broadband on tap, seek out information in radically different ways from previous generations" and how this might impact on their professional behaviour, should they choose research as a career path.  The study is intended largely to inform the Library’s own strategic thinking about information provision, but its results should also provide insights that are relevant to the broader information services and research communities.

The work is being undertaken on behalf of the Library and JISC by the UCL Centre for Information Behaviour & the Evaluation of Research (CIBER), and is due to be completed towards October 2007 - so watch out for the project results, which should be published soon after that.  See also UCL’s press release which provides some further background - although, curiously, there appears to be no relevant information on the Library’s own website…