“Well, then you Google it, as they call it” : a qualitative study of how pensioners in PRO seek and use information

The purpose of this thesis is to gain a better understanding of how elderly people seek and use information in everyday situations. A further aim is to suggest ways for the library to offer more services specifically tailored for pensioners. This is an important topic as pensioners are a rapidly growing group of library users. We conducted qualitative interviews with four elderly people concerning their information needs in everyday life, and discovered that they rarely use the library, preferring instead to get their information from various internet sites and their pensioners’ organisation. The interviews were analysed with the help of Anderson and Skot-Hansen’s model of library use. We suggest that libraries work more closely with pensioners’ organisations, thus allowing elderly people more options for information seeking, as well as greater access to library services and resources