Unsurprising news to librarians

From Inside Higher Ed:

“The digital divide used to be about the hardware haves and have-nots,” she [Susan Zvacek, director of instructional development at the University of Kansas] said. “What we’re seeing now is that it’s less about who has hardware, but who has access to information; who has those problem-solving skills. And that’s going to be the digital divide that we’re going to see in the future … the ability to deal with information.”

The assumption that today’s student are computer-literate because they are “digital natives” is a pernicious one, Zvacek said. “Our students are task-specific tech savvy: they know how to do many things,” she said. “What we need is for them to be tech-skeptical.”

And from the New York Times:

A new study coming out of Northwestern University, discovered that college students have a decided lack of Web savvy, especially when it comes to search engines and the ability to determine the credibility of search results.

Young people today use technology, but it doesn't mean they understand what they're doing, anymore than driving a car makes me an auto mechanic (and it doesn't, not one bit). But it may be unfair to pick on the youngsters: their elders once trusted Walter Cronkite and now they give that same uncritical allegiance to Rush Limbaugh. Information assessment is a crying need ... and I'm seeing librarians, knowing they can't survive as curators of books, eager to take on this task that almost no one else wants to do.