While doing research on the benefits of moving toward a paper free office, I found this study performed in 1998:
Children's Paperless Projects: inspiring research via the web
http://archive.ifla.org/IV/ifla64/009-131e.htm
This paper reports preliminary results of a study that investigated a group of 7th grade science students' search strategies in using Yahooligans, a World Wide Web search engine and directory designed for children, and their subsequent success and failure in retrieving relevant documents for their paperless research projects. Results showed that children's success was affected by the type of questions they searched (i.e., factual vs. research). Their success level in retrieving relevant documents for the assigned research question was zero percent, whereas it was thirty percent (30%) for the factual question. This study has implications for student training and for World Wide Web search engine design.
The study reminded me of how much things have changed in the last twelve years. Twelve years ago, I did my college research papers at the library with the help of lexus nexus, some microfiched articles, and maybe a couple internet references. It was that right in the middle time--when you no longer had to spend hours looking at crazy small microfiched articles (my hours were mainly spent trying to work those darn machines)--but you definitely needed to still be in the library to get access to information.
I'm not saying that libraries are no longer needed, in fact, I'm at mine a couple times a month. But how my kids find information, even how my younger sister looked for content, is a lot different than my own academic experiences--which is pretty exciting.
These 7th graders from this study are now entering the workforce with pretty savvy internet and E 2.0 skills because of the huge growth in this field just in the short time of their hs and college years.
Makes me wonder what is next? Moving toward a paperless office is a pretty exciting idea to latch on to, at least for me. Sure it is green--and I'm hippie enough to be really into that aspect. And it saves money. But the biggest bonus, in my view, is its ability to streamline a lot of our more tedious business processes. I'm tired of trying to compare various red-inked paper docs to make sure I've incorporated all necessary changes, and printing out check request forms to fill out manually, and just to print a form, only to sign it, and scan back. I realize there are already solutions for all of this, but offices haven't made it a point to make a full switch. So, I'm left feeling like I did back in my old microfiche days (nothing against the technology, it's great for archival), just feeling like this is taking way more time than need be.
After reading this, in 10 years, I think we may be thinking, "wow, it is almost humorous, that we had so many paper processes and files at one time."
If you have a great article that supports offices going paperless and research on the benefits, post them. We'd like to create a page for AIIM's Paper Free Day - October 28, 2010 - with recommended research.
