Understanding the Millennials
Greetings!
I just arrived back from the ACRL (Association for College and Research Libraries) National Conference in Seattle. Like the Reforma National Conference this past fall, it was a marvelous conference because it focuses specifically on programs and events that assist academic librarians and other library staff in their professional development.
The speakers were very good. I focused my attention on programs particularly dealing with the Millennials/Next Gen folks. It’s important for ALA leaders to understand this group of young librarians (birth years – approximately 1979-1994 and around ages 15-30) and to think about how we can engage them in ALA and prepare them to be our future association leaders.
I attended a breakfast where Richard Sweeney talked about the Milennials. This was the second time I had attended Richard’s session. And, I learned new information from Richard’s second session. Besides sharing the characteristics of this generation, he also talked about how the Millennials describe the library of the future.
The second session I attended was that of Dr. Lynn Connaway, an invited speaker for the conference. Lynn is a senior research associate for OCLC and spoke on how academic librarians need to explore new opportunities for extending current services that would engage the Millennials. She and her colleague’s research focused on virtual reference services and millennial users and non-users.
Both speakers confirm my resolve to continue to reach out more to our millennial association members. After attending the two sessions, I also hosted a luncheon of three millennials (of which two were MLS students and 2 were less than 4 years in the profession) and a Generation Xer. I just sat back and mostly listened to their conversation. These folks are excited about coming into the profession; and it is important to harness that excitement and respond favorably to their professional needs from an association point of view.
How we approach the Millennial librarians/staff for professional and leadership development needs to be seriously considered. We have a generation that thinks differently than the Baby Boomers; responds differently; and communicates differently. We need to be aware of those differences (and their interests) and develop programs to fit their needs. This is no different than what we do in our libraries to determine what our users want and how we deliver those services to make our libraries relevant to those users.
March 26, 2009 at 3:49 pm
I’m excited about working with new librarians, but I’m also excited about working with library workers who have been in libraries for 30 years. We work in organizations that have multi-generation environments, boomers, gen-X, and millenials. My oldest grand-daughter is 14 and she will soon be entering the workforce, so the next generation is going to entering our library workforce. So our challenge is yes our challenge is one of understanding millenials, but it’s also one of working in a diverse community of library workers in an environment that is in continual transition.
April 7, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Liz –
Points well-taken. You are right we cannot do without one or the other. Nothing will change in terms of realizing that we all work in diverse organizations [diverse defined in the broadest since]. As we had previously discussed, like President Obama — we need to be as inclusive as possible to make sure that we sustain an excellent group of leaders within ALA currently and in the future.