Millennial Generation Needs Special Handling
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-- School Library Journal, 7/6/2006
If librarians want young people to take them seriously, they have to learn to communicate with the so-called Millennial generation, a group of young people whose everyday lives are steeped in technology.
Today's kids are confident, assertive multitaskers who have bested every generation preceding them on IQ tests, scoring an average of 25 points higher than their baby-boomer parents. That's according to findings presented to a packed house of librarians during the recent American Library Association (ALA) convention in New Orleans.
Stephen Abram, vice president of Innovation for SirsiDynix talked about Millennials (born between 1978 and 2000) and how libraries must better serve these young people. Abram described his findings during a presentation, titled "The Kids Are Alright! Millennials and their Information Behaviors," at a June 25 event at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.
Hosted by the Young Adult Library Service Association, Abram, past president of the Canadian Library Association, spoke to a rapt audience of librarians about this special cohort of young people.
Among the revelations were: Millennials tend to be assertive kids "who want it now." And while the generation preceding Millennials, the Gen-Xers, were disillusioned, the Millennials are optimistic about the future. They are "doers," who are consummate multitaskers and so immersed in 21st-century tech tools that technology doesn't seem extraordinary but instead is totally embedded in their everyday lives.
What should librarians do to connect to Millennials? To remain relevant, librarians should construct a presence on social networking sites such as MySpace "I'm stunned at how many libraries don't have a presence here," he said. Instant messaging—which Abram described as the biggest divide between [Millennials] and their elders—is key to reaching this generation. "Align library services with the technologies that people are using," Abram added.
