Alison J. Head, Founder and Director of Project Information Literacy recounts her findings from an IMLS planning grant study about how recent college graduates “find and use information in the workplace.” While recent graduates are able to find “instant information” on Google, they often missed the “social side of research,” a skill employers value highly. Head observes,
As one employer explained, “Grads miss that you can reach out to other people and get information too. Research is not all factual, there are other experiential factors we need to think about in the workplace — internal business factors like budget, global economies, things like that.
Successful, young graduates can contextualize both research questions and their answers using tacit information learned from personal interactions with colleagues in conversation with “instant information” found in databases and Google.
This post was produced through a cooperation between Virginia Pannabecker, Brian Rosenblum, Caitlin Pollock and Amy Wickner (Editors-at-large for the week), Caro Pinto (Editor for the week), and Zach Coble and Roxanne Shirazi (dh+lib Review Editors).
Post on mismatches btwn student info skills/employer needs interesting in light of question-shaming discussion at ALA http://t.co/A6ECKG2ORW
POST: Mismatch Between Graduates’ Information Skills and Employers’ Needs http://t.co/6mnBp8hKN4 via @feedly