I’m in the process of researching the topic of the use of Twitter as an actual tool for doing useful research. The results of this will be published in the April issue of The Information Advisor, but so far I’ve been able to locate two different sites that permit levels of keyword searching of recent Twitters–that’s the first step at least: These are:

 Twitterment and TweetScan

Of course there’s more to a good research tool than the ability to conduct a search–the content has to be valuable and useful too…and there is a possibility that Twitter could be used for near real-time and archival business intelligence, and competitive intelligence as well as for identifying trends–maybe! That’s what I’m looking into now.

I just came across this very interesting study that analyzes how GenY/the Millennials “Google” approach information gathering and research particularly in relation to access of scholarly information, as well as the use of Libraries. It’s a free 32 page document, released a couple of weeks ago by the British Library and the (Joint Information Systems Committee)  JISC. Here’s a blurb from the conclusion:

The picture that emerges from internet research is that most visitors to scholarly sites view only a few pages, many of which do not even contain real content, and in any case do not stop long enough to do any real reading.This is either a symptom of a really worrying malaise - failure at the library terminal - or maybe a sign that awhole new form of online reading behaviour is beginning to emerge, one based on skimming titles, contents pagesand abstracts: we call this `power browsing’. We urgently need to understand the root causes of this phenomenon…

Recently, I’ve been immersed in the world of social media–I’m teaching a course on it this semester at the Department of Media Studies and Film The New School in New York City where I teach (online), and of course, I write about social media often from the perspective of business research in my publication, The Information Advisor.

As part of these efforts I’ve been doing a lot of scouting for new bloggers that have something truly insightful and compelling to say about social media.  The one that I’ve been most impressed with recently is called The Praized Blog. Its a creation of a company called Praized Media, a Montreal-based firm, which focuses on trust, and the local angle of social media, which most observers feel is going to be a very important part of how this area evolves. The Praized Blog is written primarily by Praized VP Sebastien Provencher.

I’ve been enjoying Sebastien’s insights. One in particular that I’ve been pondering is his posting that one should consider Facebook simply as “a game”. Another very interesting post on this blog illustrated the level of overlap between the major social networking sites.

Scan it for yourself–I think you’ll like it.

Anything that comes out of one of the Pew Research Center always merits my attention.  So if you are interested in the changing role of libraries as our collective source for doing research and locating information, I highly recommend taking a look at its new survey, (done in partnership with Leigh Estabrook, Professor Emerita, University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign,) entitled, In Search of Solutions: How People Use the Internet, Libraries and Government to Find Help.

Of particular relevance and importance is looking at how the younger generation, including GenY approach finding information. As this group moves into the workplace, this will clearly have implications for the way information and knowledge is located, evaluated, and distributed throughout the enterprise.