Boy, librarians sure seem to be able to write about this topic. In recent months I’ve seen seemingly dozens of articles with the words “disconnect” “library” “millennial” “net/next gen” in their titles. The vast majority of these papers cite S. R. Ranganathan’s five laws and advocate their restructuring in order to keep millennials interested in libraries. But how? Come on, I want concrete ideas here people! There are lots of free, relatively easy-to-implement ideas for academic libraries (many of which are already being attempted by some courageous librarians at other institutions), but as a profession and an institution, librarians and libraries are bound by what I see as a serious catch 22:
Many of the electronic information systems we provide are just not as slick design-wise as the tools our users are familiar with. And I’m not just referring to young users here; I recently co-taught a 6 week course called “New Ways of Doing Research on the Internet” for Carnegie Mellon’s Academy of Lifelong Learning. Senior citizen status was the only prerequisite requirement, and these people blew me away! They were very adept at searching Google and quickly grasped concepts such as Boolean logic, phrase searching, domain searching and other advanced search techniques. I dare say they were just as proficient as most of the undergrads I’ve met.
So look, we know people of all ages and most walks of life are becoming more tech-savvy by necessity so lets get the ball rolling revamping libraries’ web presences and deisign intelligent interfaces! I want:
RSS catalog updates (Now please)
Instant messaging widgets on every page with staffing during reference hours.
CSS! CSS! CSS! (what I’m getting at is semi-professionally designed library web sites)
My list will undoubtedly continue to grow…
Back to my catch 22: How and where are libraries to get the funding to do this stuff?! We cannot in good conscience relegate the S. R. Ranganathan’s principles as they are fundamental to our internal identity as librarians, but we must adapt and dump more time/money/resources into being reflexive entities.
I don’t have one answer to this grand question, but I do have a few suggestions. First, lets quit talking about this as a “millenial disconnect”. This is a USER disconnect that affects the majority of our users from ages 5-105. Second, administrators need to hire more “jack of all trades” librarians to handle multiple roles with equitable efficiency. This means shifting from the current trend of hiring for experience over initiative. Perhaps take a look at a newish librarian with 3-5 years of experience (but with many skills) than a much more experienced librarian with an extremely focussed, but static career of 20-40 years. Lastly, comes marketing and user education: some public and academic libraries are catching on here but more needs to be done in changing the stereotypical old, slow, rigid library into a hip, reflexive, technology-filled place that still serves its community as an information hub (including print literature!). If we do these things and remain open minded and flexible, libraries will continue to serve functional roles in American society.
