Digital Consumers: implications and lessons for libraries, publishers and government

The Swiss National Library, CERN and AILIS invite you to the first Library Science Talk 2010.

The talk will take place on Monday 8 February at 15.30 in Geneva at CERN and on Tuesday 9 February at 15.30 in Bern at the Swiss National Library.

For the talk in Geneva at CERN, external guests should be at the CERN reception, building 33, at 15:15 to be guided to the conference room. You should register beforehand by contacting susanne.schaefer@cern.ch or by phone at 022-767 24 31.

For the talk in Bern at the Swiss National Library, external guests should be at Hallwylstrasse 15 at 15.30. For further information and a map, you may contact Ms. Genevieve Clavel at genevieve.clavel@nb.admin.ch or by telephone at 031-322 89 36.

Our speaker is:

Professor David Nicholas
University College London

He will present:

Digital Consumers: implications and lessons for libraries, publishers and government

The presentation describes and evaluates the use, information seeking and reading behaviour of the ubiquitous digital information consumer, as portrayed in the digital, tell-tale footprints they leave behind them. Data are drawn from a seven year study of the digital consumer in the media, voluntary sector, health and scholarly information environments by the CIBER research group at UCL. Hundreds of thousands of digital consumers from all over the globe are covered in the analyses. On the basis of these data, the characteristics of their digital footprints are highlighted demonstrating that a huge paradigm shift has apparently occurred in information seeking and reading behaviour of everyone, but especially the young. The results are surprising, disturbing and challenging for society as a whole, especially in regard to young. The presentation concludes with a discussion of the significance of the findings for information professionals, teachers, publishers, employers and government and how best to cope with a population with a marked preference for fast information, multi-tasking and power browsing, but not reading and reflection[1]. 

[1]The CIBER findings will form part of a BBC television, The Virtual Revolution which will be televised on 20th February. Rushes can be found at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/digitalrevolution/rushes.shtml

The talk will be in English.

Susanne Schaefer
CERN Library, Geneva