lauren's library blog

…More choices, customized, personalized, collaborative, self-service, faster, time saving, anywhere, anytime
Richard Sweeney
New Jersey Institute of Technology

• Acknowledged the millennials would not have turned off their cell phone, and in fact would be text messaging.
• No generational music: asked members no one listened to teh same: more choices, no need to conform… fundamental shift in how we have to operate
• Big picture: 1979-1994 (could be 1980 or 1982 depending on the group)
• Want to talk about what millennials mean for libraries
• Facebook and Youtube is information, now everyone is in the information business
• Disruptive technology
• Disruptive innovation
• Reminded us CDRoms were big only 7 years ago
• Are millennials different from other generations at the same age (gen x at 18 vs. millenial at 18)
• Millennials make more voice calls than any other generation, they communicate more than any other generation.
• Done focus groups with people all over world. Millennials in other parts of the world closer to millennials in the US than their own families. (participants were English speaking and online)
• Word of mouth is the way they get most of their information and news
• Was going to call the talk millennials: disruptive innovators
• They’ll come up, tape you, and next minute you know you’re on the web: they are into user generated content to share with their friends.
• But millennials aren’t doing the innovation yet, they’re just driving it.
• Millennials think differently. But then, everyone thinks differently from everyone else.
• The Millennial Driven Library Innovation Imperative
• Expects scholarly communication will look much different in the next 5-10 years
• faster, learn faster, more customized to social networking kind of thing, peer to peer learning
• Secret: recognizing when we need to change… not too far ahead or behind curve
• Why text message: all about speed and time, it’s about impatience and getting the answers quickly
• What have we done to speed up our faculty and student learning? We need to be thinking about how to speed up information access.
• Want engagement, interactivity. Long lecture is the kiss of death. Podcasting lecture to make time for active classes.
• Want to be engaged in a public good. We need to reinforce and go back to what the public good of the libraries is to engage them.
• They want to be able to contribute new knowledge. Video, upload, and share. Study found if students create podcasts, more likely to look at other podcasts than if the faculty member makes it. This isn’t just about theses and dissertations but all kinds of knowledge.
• Let us preserve our diverse cultures. During the years Millennials were growing up, huge amount of immigration.
• Doesn’t think what he’s saying is new, but that we have to think about it in libraries.
• “Innovation only happens with change, which of course, is disruptive to traditional employees and processes. How can the academic library assist Millennial students in learning faster and making their college/university experience more engaging and so on?”
• This is a chance to make libraries more valuable to the academy and the world.
• Reminded us of Did you know 2.0

• We are preparing students for jobs and technologies that don’t exist to solve problems that we don’t know will exist.
• Millennials more open to change, he says therefore more liberal
• Average 265 voice calls, compared to 193 by 45-54 year olds. Drops off considerably once they get jobs.
• Millennials huge generation, second only to Boomers. In about 7 years they will be the dominate demographic in the workforce.
• Believe strongly in merit based, rather than length of service, rewards.
• Feel perfectly comfortable talking back to their superiors.
• 1995 as the beginning of the internet… Oldest millennials were 15 when it started up.
• “Disruptive technologies are particularly threatening to the leaders of an existing market, because they are competition coming from an unexpected direction.”
• Carl Sagan: libraries connect us with the greatest minds across time and space.
• We need to energize our young leaders to go out and do that.
• 2008 freshmen were the peak birth year for millennials, so college student population dropping
• Studies indicating a real personality shift: more open to change, social bored, not perfectionist, rule conscious (not to say they follow them all), 3/4 think they’re above average.
• More choices, personalization, collaborative, flexibility, read less, experiential, nomadic communication, digital natives, gamers, achievement oriented, impatient, pull not push, media consumers, multitaskers, politically engaged, more liberal, social involvement, more diverse, social bold, patriotic, more friends, more workplace training, high expectation (eg incomes), merit systems, balanced lives/healthly lifestyles, values, credit-high debt, 1.5-3 years in the job
• Space shapes behavior. How do we think about our space?
• Sharing screens at the heart of collaboration. How are we enabling this for knowledge creation? How are you enabling the sharing of multiple screens?
• Want face-to-face instruction that is interactive.
• What if we have a post-peer review instead of peer review?
• Enable students teaching students.

Library of the future (from millennial perspective): more online teaching, mobile, new media, rethinking peer review and redefining what scholarly communication is, more accessible materials (electronic, not waiting for ILL, netflix like), more emphasis on library as place (library to study rather than materials), reminded of digital divide (and how libraries still need to help with basic tech skills), teaching media production that is scholarly (with citations, depth, etc… we need to provide support),

Library of the future (from ALA leadership): Jim Rettig asked how these factors influence our associations…. you no longer have to go to a conference to meet people, you no longer have to go though the formal and slow publication process. All kinds of opportunities lie outside of our organizations that once were only within it. ALA looking for ways to do some of this. Any membership organization needs to be thinking about this. Camila Alire found challenges were with generations. Older employees not very patient for impatient generation coming in. She said this is the most exciting time to come into this profession. Even though we talk about millennials being impatient, she sees this generation as one of change agents. We need to be aware that when coming in, it’s hard to make change when there are 20 or 30 people who are used to how things have been done. She thinks administration should come to sessions like this to learn how things are shifting. Erika Linke described Help Hunt, a group of three students who are trying to change things. Using donor money to implement. Points out that one day millennials will be in the older position asking what the new folks are thinking. We always need to be thinking about what users are thinking and need.

Related posts:

1. What is scholarship? Who has authority?
2. millennial reality
3. teaching millennials
4. post-millennials (already!?!)
5. leadership and the next generation librarian