Careers information: is online the only way to go?

I was given a guided tour of LSE's lovely careers service this week, and was struck by the almost total lack of careers information within the service. Information about careers is now so widely available online, that they simply aren't using paper based information at all, so services have stopped holding it. This makes sense to me - there is no point in wasting space and time maintaining a careers library that no one uses. But I am concerned about the alternative.

The evidence tells us that we are all, in general, pretty poor at taking in information that we read. Studies time and again show us that the process of reading careers information is not massively useful to clients; what helps is the conversations with the practitioners they have before and after their research (Savard and Michaud 2005). This also fits with Vygotsky's theories about language and thought, which explain that our thoughts are crystallised through conversations: we only really know what we think when we have a chance to talk it through.

In the old days, a student would start their trip to the careers library by telling the librarian what they were looking for - this brief conversation helped them to be really clear in their own minds about exactly what they were trying to find. Some might then have an ongoing dialogue with the librarian throughout their visit, but even the most independent researchers would be asked to engage with a brief chat about whether they had found what they were looking for at the end of their visit, and this conversation might then lead to booking an appointment with a careers adviser to discuss what their new information means to them.

These conversations are what make the information meaningful and relevant, and they are what has been lost with the move from a paper based service to an online service.

So what can we do about it? The solution might be in the way that the online services are designed and managed. My very limited understanding of the potential of technology limits my imagination, but I am sure there are ways to work it better.Could we design websites that ask the right questions at the right time? Rather than letting people browse for themselves, could we ask them what, specifically, they are looking for before giving them access to the right information? Or could their web browsing trigger some interactive questions? Or even better, could it trigger some kind of real time, real person contact - actively encouraging interaction on each webpage? Could we get people to sign in with their twitter accounts so that we can tweet them whilst they are searching?

I wonder what innovative ideas other people have? There are probably some great websites out there that do these sorts of things really well. Do let me know if you've come across any.

Savard, G. & Michaud, M. (2005). The Impact of LMI on the Career Decision-Making Process: Literature Review. FLMM