A very interesting article that I think has implicactions for our health care environments. College kids and tech school students graduate and get jobs in healthcare and still don't know where to find answers. --MM

Some choice quotes :

"Today's college students might have grown up with the language of the information age, but they do not necessarily know the grammar. "I think it really exploded this myth of the 'digital native,' " Asher said. "Just because you've grown up searching things in Google doesn't mean you know how to use Google as a good research tool."

These results can be taken in a positive light: as the library building has receded as a campus mecca, librarians have often had to combat the notion that online tools are making them irrelevant. The evidence from ERIAL lends weight to their counterargument: librarians are more relevant than they have ever been, since students need guides to shepherd them through the wilderness of the Web. Indeed, students who had attended library orientations or tutorials showed more proficiency than those who had not.

There was just one problem, Duke and Asher noted: "Students showed an almost complete lack of interest in seeking assistance from librarians during the search process." Of all the students they observed -- many of whom struggled to find good sources, to the point of despair -- not one asked a librarian for help.