Why am I not suprised...? - Cameron Neylon

saw the press release for the original piece of work behind that yesterday here: http://www.rin.ac.uk/our-wor... - Jo Badge

Like as in "I share your...concern? Despair?" - Neil Saunders

Ah I missed that - also interesting in the context of the NIH grants - anyone tracked any more information on those projects? - Cameron Neylon

I don't really despair but assuming that group culture and practice will change because some young people come in isn't suprising. Search happens with a single person, so they will use those tools, but social bookmarking requires groups acting together. This means that you at least need critical mass within the group, or more likely, active encouragement from the top. - Cameron Neylon

Change is happening, But ... very ... slowly. - AJCann

hmm, just skimming the report (from Brisith library) says that librarians need to reconnect with scientists - errr, when were they connected? - Jo Badge

I'll set the librarians on you. - AJCann

and here we are. what? oh, well, it's a given that people contact their friends first before the librarian - that's been found in our literature for probably close to 100 years. i'm thinking that search engines probably are above friends now... .what's really great is if you're friends with a ton of your scientists and engineers so even if they don't call "the library" they say, "well I'll just call Christina" (I get that a lot) - Christina Pikas

but about the article - I'm happy to see this because it supports the findings of the first wave of articles on the uptake of ICTs in science from the 90s. 1)it's not just a matter of time, 2) it isn't necessarily a matter of age (not all youngsters want to try or know how to use all new technologies), etc.3) usage across areas of science will differ - Christina Pikas

From Jo's comment, an outside observer would have to ask: Is it that science librarians make no effort to connect with researchers (which, given people like John D. and Christina P., I find VERY hard to believe) or that researchers show no interest in a connection? "You can lead a horse to water" and all that... but what do I know, being neither a scientist nor a librarian? - Walt Crawford

I think another aspect of this is the plain old fashioned 24 hour day. My students -- and yes, they are undergrads -- are absorbing so much content information that they MUST learn or they fail, and doing so much volunteer/shadowing that they MUST do or they cannot get into grad school, and even those doing research are so busy learning western blots and how not to screw things up that they just don't have time to breathe, let alone learn how mendeley/zotero/citeulike/ etc might help them. I make my advanced students use it; they will have less excuse. But my beginners simply cannot intellectually stay afloat with that much load (and yes, they do learn how to use academic search engines, not just g-scholar). - Mickey Schafer

I'm wondering what our generation is going to say the one after us is failing to adopt. Seems to me like there's an unspoken assumption behind the question - either there has to be mass uptake for it to be useful or something along the lines of "What's the business model?" These questions invariably seem to come as people are trying to justify the use of web20 tools to themselves or their colleagues, and I've been hearing them for so long from different groups as if they're the first ones to ask the question. It's been asked and answered in many fields over and over and it's be nice if some of these "X group is/isn't using social media" analyses would build upon each other, instead of re-treading the same old ground over and over. I love talking about it and it's one of my passions, but it does get a little tiresome to hear the same questions over and over. Not griping at anyone here - it's the established institutions that do this. - Mr. Gunn