Impress Your Professor: What kind of information technology user are you?

Hey everyone! My name is Adam Day and I'm the new Treasurer of ASIS&T! I'm sure you want to know a little about me. Let's see... I'm an Omnivore when it comes to technology. Are you reading this wondering what exactly does that mean? Let me try to explain.

A few days ago I stumbled onto this website: http://www.pewinternet.org/quiz/index.asp. The Pew Internet & American Life Project is hosting a “What kind of Information Technology User are you” quiz. After completing the quiz I found out that I'm an Omnivore. Pew states that “Members of this group use their extensive suite of technology tools to do an enormous range of things online, on the go, and with their cell phones. Omnivores are highly engaged with video online and digital content. Between blogging, maintaining their Web pages, remixing digital content, or posting their creations to their websites, they are creative participants in cyberspace.”

The questions are fairly generic but I find the whole idea really interesting. As future Librarians I feel we should all have some basic understanding of information technology so that we can assist users in meeting their information goals. While working reference I've had patrons that know a lot about technology and some that know almost nothing. Wouldn't it be a lot easier if we could just have each patron fill out this quick survey before each reference interview so we would know how best to deal with their questions.

That's all from me this week. Now that I've told you a little about myself, I encourage all of you to complete the quiz and tell me your results!