According to the 2012 U.S. Book Consumer Demographics and Buying Behaviors Annual Review, if you were born between 1979 and 1989, you spent more money on books in 2011 than older Americans.
A Pew presentation documents the ubiquity of mobile technology and social networking and how libraries can use it to their advantage and even rethink their focus (thanks to Garrett Eastman). Useful charts showing the penetration of mobile and broadband internationally, together with any data on teens and adults information behavior.
Incorporating web 2.0 behaviors (e.g. recommending, commenting, social bookmarking) into the array of valid reserch metrics is a long work in progress...
JISC study form OCLC, RIN and JISC survey data on digital library user behavior, highlights disciplinary differences in e-research and reliance upon Google
"Much turmoil in the scholarly-communication ecosystem appears to revolve around simple ownership of intellectual property. Unpacking that notion, however, produces a fascinating tangle of stakeholders, desires, products and struggles. Some products of the research process, especially novel ones, are difficult to fit into legal concepts of ownership. As collaborative research burgeons, traditional ownership and authorship criteria are stretched to their limits and beyond, with many contributors still feeling short of due credit. The desire for access and impact brings institutions and grant funders into the formerly exclusive relationship between authors and publishers. Librarians, stripped of first-sale rights by electronic licensing, wonder about both access and long-term preservation. Emerging solutions to many of these difficulties threaten to cut publishers out of the picture altogether, perhaps a welcome change to those stakeholders who find publishers' behavior to block progress."
Excerpt: similarities and emerging differences between Generation Y and
older students in six broad areas:
* constraints on research;
* ways of searching for research information;
* research resources used;
* using library collections and services;
* using technology in research;
* training and support to research.
...
Investigates data from two multi-user studies funded by IMLS, finding convenience is a determinative of infomation seeking regardless of "age, gender, academic role," virtual or non-virtual use.