The virtual scholar: essential context for understanding social media users and use Professor David Nicholas CIBER Research Group

Big picture is everything in understanding digital world (and we know what that picture looks like) CIBER pedigree (the grounded view) Because of numerous digital information platforms studied and millions of digital footprints extracted CIBER in great position to contextualise Unlike many who inhabit this territory bring no baggage with us, just a treasure trove overflowing with data Evidence base and dispassionate analysis Paradigm shift in behaviour of scholar/researcher and becoming endemic, hard-wired. Future is now and challenging. Know exactly how behaviour forming and in great detail but information providers still to take this on board (BBC have!) so social media tsunami could see further decoupling of users from traditional information suppliers

Same road, same journey; just a massive step further down the road Disintermediation round 2. The knock-out blow? Social media is a natural development of what has happened so far in the digital space; but this round different because has attached everyone to the big fat information pipe and ratcheted-up DIY behaviour to the top of Richter scale Good place then to remind ourselves of the changes that have happened as a result of the digital transition and resulting disintermediation and revisit the key ‘D’ words

Transformations 1.Digital transition creates unbelievable access (choice) to everything SM delivers more. 2.Disintermediation is a consequence and results in fast and massive choice, courtesy of Google, agent of anarchy SM delivers more choice 3.Digital transition has much further to go what with the likes of mobile devices, smart phones and e-books 4.The digital transition means behaviour goes on remotely and anonymously.

5.Consequence is librarians, publishers etc.) know less and less about what more and more people do (especially librarians) 6.Leads to decoupling and, possibly, professional & business melt down 7.Compounded by fact that the virtual has fundamentally changed the way we seek, use and communicate 8.In vacuum danger of working on basis of old, uninformed, paradigm 9.Need to visualise, conceptualise and act what is going on. Especially for born digital 10.And transitions are very fast indeed: an internet year is seven weeks !

Same road, same journey; just a massive step further down the road Social media will amplify behaviour we are already witnessing (not distort or change it) so let us remind ourselves of the key characteristics….

Digital behaviour: characteristics 1. Massive use and growth Greater availability, access and more digitisation provide the fuel. And social media dwarfs mainstream use. Everyone wants to search in big wide open and hate being constrained by ‘local’ collections; dying to break out 2. Bouncing and promiscuous Because of massive choice, acceptance of failure and end- user checking. With social media there will be even more bouncing, flicking and one-shot visits

Digital behaviour: characteristics 3. Fast information. Speed & availability (first one up) trump everything; fast bag pick-up. Q. visits function of multi-tasking and navigating about. Nobody spends much time on any one thing – expect this to be even more the case – Twitter. Conditioned even more. Fast food and they love it; publishers take time to prepare food! 4. Trust difficult to discern and up for grabs Don’t even know whose information it is; its information stupid! Going to be even more difficult. Phone a friend; brand cool; disintermediated; breakdown of peer review. People want a choice between ScienceDirect and an individual’s blog – choice the key characteristic 5. Want it immersive, want it social Want the wisdom of the crowd.

Conclusions 1.Tidal wave breaking now and impact quickly being felt 2.Publishers earning loads only showing a passing interest and librarians seem really out of the equation 3.Young, as with everything, are running with it, and at the moment they have plenty of reason. Feel shut out. 4.Level playing field for young and humanities scholars