This very scholarly publication provides recent background research examples relating to a range of information-seeking behaviours of children and adolescents. There are 19 contributors from a range of universities in the US, Canada and New Zealand. The editors invited scholars from diverse backgrounds, institutions and locales to report on their current research.
The publication is divided into three sections: the first reviews research involving models and examples focusing on children/adolescents, encompassing focus questions, literature reviews, theoretical perspectives and models, methodologies, data analysis, implications and conclusions. The second section relates to special populations, with a focus on young girls' access to and use of ICTs, including mobile technologies in information-poor societies, gender and ethnic differences, socio-economic differences, rural and urban differences and children with special needs. The same thorough treatment is applied to these populations with research questions, theoretical frameworks, methodology, literature reviews and discussion of findings to draw conclusions. The third section takes this research-based foundation to design systems to deal with technology connections, images and catalogue organisation of information for young children and designing intervention tools with students.
Whilst we take for granted the child/adolescent use of the web, mobile technologies, social networking, texting, virtual realities, gaming, etc., this publication's research indicates that this is not always effective or efficient; and it is certainly uneven in different populations and also uneven within seemingly fairly homogeneous populations. Though developed and developing countries invest in ICT, there is a challenging disparity in access to, and use of, ICTs.
The authors state that the ‘digital natives’ within a developed country do not generally value hard copy resources but are focused on ICTs involving multitasking, collaboration and experimentation, with a paradigm shift towards virtual sources, multimedia platforms, online presentations and blogs. These information seekers skim and surf the web for formal and informal school-based research and personal information. The levels of competence and rigour applied to their information seeking vary enormously. Teens were involved in workshops to explore their information needs, information encountering, information creating and remixing, information management, information curation, information sharing and giving, using a variety of devices to demonstrate their behaviour. A common thread is the enormous impact of technological evolution on the information-seeking behaviour of new generations over the last 10 years, with even toddlers moving seamlessly between physical and digital worlds.
This title highlights a dilemma facing every teacher, teacher-librarian and public librarian who deals with children and adolescents: how to be relevant to the populations we serve in supporting their information-seeking needs. The contributors offer their research to illustrate reality and rigorously examine their findings to establish a platform for professional discussion and approaches to meeting information-seeking needs in the future.