Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, opened Wednesday’s keynote address by sharing a few humorous tweets/postings that he’s seen about himself, including one proclaiming him as the “king of internet research.” He quickly moved on to discuss research that the Pew Internet and American Life Project has conducted. He quoted numerous statistics on how internet and cell phone usage has grown since 2000. For example, in a March 2000 study, they found that only 46 percent of adults used the internet and half of adults had cellphones. In contrast, a 2009 survey showed that 79 percent of adults use the internet and 85 percent own a cell phone.
Lee Rainie
He then discussed how today’s “information and media ecosystem,” has evolved. One of the more familiar changes he mentioned is the large growth in the amount and variety of information available, sometimes to the detriment of the quality of the information, despite improvements in search algorithms. Additionally, people acquire information through a larger variety of media, often via multiple media types at the same time. People have also become more engaged with the information they acquire and will comment on it, rank it, and value input from other internet users.
Rainie also discussed how social networks have evolved to become more important socially, politically, economically, and culturally. While most people are involved in social networks to a certain extent, only a small percentage of people become very active in posting and sharing information. These power users become “influencers” to people who consult social networks, and they often help people sift through and evaluate information. He pointed to the opportunity for librarians to become “influencers” within social networks and to assist their patrons as they go through the information seeking and evaluation process. This is especially important for medical libraries with the emergence of the “e-patient.” Despite encouraging librarians to be as involved as they can be, he also mentioned that patrons won’t hold it against a library if it is not involved in social networks, but they do expect whatever services libraries provide to be of high quality.
Lee Rainie is the author of the books Hopes and Fears and Up for Grabs, and he is currently co-authoring a book series entitled Ubiquity, Mobility, Security that will be released in 2011. The Pew Internet and American Life Project is part of the non-profit Pew Charitable Trusts. Their research reports are freely available online <http://www.pewinternet.org/>.
Crystal Knapp, Visiting Lecturer
Community College of Philadelphia Library
Philadelphia, Pa.
cknapp@ccp.edu
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