New research is turning traditional thinking about libraries on its head. More than half of U.S. residents visited a library in the past 12 months to use computers instead of search for books, according to a survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Specifically, 58 percent of participants in a national phone survey said they used the Internet at home, work, a public library, or some other place to get help in solving problems during the past two years.

"These findings turn our thinking about libraries upside down," Leigh Estabrook, Dean and Professor Emerita at the University of Illinois, and coauthor of a report on the results of the survey, said in a statement.

Library's New Purpose?

Of the 53 percent of U.S. adults who said they visited a library in 2007, young adults age 18 to 30 -- commonly known as Generation Y -- were the biggest library computer users, according to the Pew study. Compared to their elders, Gen Y members were the most likely to use libraries for problem-solving information and general patronage.

Overall, more than two-thirds of library patrons of all age groups said they used computers during their library visits. What's more, Internet users were more than twice as likely to patronize libraries as non-Internet users.

Young adults said they are most likely to use libraries in the future when they encounter problems: 40 percent of Gen Y said they would do that, compared with 20 percent of those above age 30 who say they would go to a library.

"Librarians have been asked whether the Internet makes libraries less relevant. It has not. Internet use seems to create an information hunger and it is information-savvy young people who are the most likely to visit libraries," Estabrook noted.

Meeting Citizen Needs

According to Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, and one of the study's authors, it is important to stress that even though data shows the Internet is growing more popular, many people do not use the Internet.

This low-access population prefers getting information and assistance from sources other than the Internet. "Those without broadband connections at home or at work have very different needs and search strategies from those who have woven the Internet into their lives," Rainie said in a statement.

Another focus of the research was to see how the rise of the Internet might affect the way government officials and librarians could work to meet citizen needs.

Evans Witt, CEO of Princeton Survey Research Associates International, the firm that conducted the survey and one of the report's authors, said the big message in this survey is that those who want to help -- whether they sit in government offices, libraries, nonprofit organizations, or politically active groups -- live in a much more complicated environment now than they did a decade ago.

"They must serve citizen needs that run the spectrum from high-tech digerati who want everything served to them online to grandparents in rural areas who want the government to mail them key documents that are printed on real paper with real ink," Witt said in a statement.