I may have to do more library-related posts. Even with some moderation delays, conversation on this cluster of posts is nothing short of remarkable.

And, wow! Some real discussion for once in the biblioblogosphere. Of course, I’ve always known that you were open to it. Nonetheless, I don’t see much of it. More on that topic soon though.

And, Dorothea, yes I agree, there is some (small) amount of merit in paying attention to them. But, as has been further elucidated here, the merit is in payng attention to your own patrons and your own employees.

I do not base my objections simply on my own 2 kids. I spent several years in the classroom pursuing an undergraduate degree with people the age of my children. I worked the front lines of a university librarie’s circulation, reserve and ILL desk working with, and supervising, many people of these generations. As Dave Tyckoson said, you simply cannot draw many generalizations if you spend some real live time with them. And I’m sorry, but that does not include from the other side of the reference desk as the “professional.” Just had a conversation with my mentor today about her experience trying to connect with this generation as a reference librarian. Wrong position to make much headway there, but that is a completely different, but highly related, discussion.

Wow, and to think I came here just now for a link….

Again, thanks all for a great discussion!

“In fact, by playing to generational sterotypes you miss one of the rules of people management which is to pay attention to the actual people working for you.”

Geez, what a concept: Dealing with the actual people instead of the nicely-slotted stereotypes.

The other piece of “better toys” is the extent to which one decade’s technological magic becomes the next decade’s ordinary toolkit and/or background noise. But that issue breaks differently than defined “generations.”

I must admit that I’m also bemused by the largest-by-definition “Millennial” generation–that somehow everyone born since 1980 is alike. Heck, if you define GenX as everyone born since 1960, then GenX is the largest generation ever. It’s become an odd sort of shell game, or a way of assigning mass and therefore power.

However, in my several hours per week that I work at the reference desk, I come into direct contact with this same generation of young people. What I see from talking to hundreds (thousands?) of members of this generation each year is that there are no common facts about them. There is a diversity of interest and goals among today’s young population that cannot be generalized into a coherent group of game-playing, hip-hop-listening, instant-messaging, tattoed, attention-deficit-prone, cell-phone-talking, purple-haired slackers.

What I find is that I have met the new generation — and they are a lot like us. There is one clear difference, though — they have better toys than we did. Of course, we had better toys than our parents, who had better toys than their grandparents…..

The generation that said “don’t trust anyone over 30″ is not only now more than twice that age, but has been running the nation for a decade or more. Today’s young people are the teachers, nurses, doctors, lawyers, artists, journalists, business owners, social workers, and (God forbid) librarians of the future. From where I sit, the future looks pretty good because the people who will be forming it have the goals, dreams, and motivation to make it happen — just like each generation before them did.

What bothers me about gen-gen (hey Mark, feel free to use commercially as well, with or without attribution, as long as you don’t say Gen2.0) is that it pretty much invites libraries to Go Out and Serve The New Patrons, Who Are Defined Thusly–without the nasty work of finding out what the local community actually wants and will respond to, and without worrying about side-effects that annoy existing loyal patrons. I’ll be so evil as to suggest that GenWhatever in Mountain View, CA is unlikely to be overwhelmingly similar to GenWhatever in Yreka, CA, much less Kanab, UT.

I’m not even entirely convinced that public librarians of my generation and the one that followed have all been expecting patrons to bend themselves around libraries and librarians. Yes, there are some new tools that allow for more flexibility–but a fair number of public libraries have been reaching out for some time.

No, not every Millennial embodies every Millennial tendency. In the aggregate, however, they present challenges that repay attention.

Says the darn-near perfect embodiment of the Gen-Xer, anyway.

Of course, there’s no doubt lots of money to be made by becoming an expert on these different groups. Or maybe that’s just me being cynical…and after all, I’m Gen X and we’re all totally cynical, right?