Born with the Chip

摘要

Librarians have adapted amazingly well to the challenges of an Internet-enabled, web-dominated world. It's been quite a ride as we worked with digital content, learned new search tools, and strived to get our many and varied systems interconnected. Now the roller coaster really begins as we deal with the next generation―those "born with the chip"―who have grown up in the 1980s with computers and don't think of them as technology. They are part of their cultural DNA. Given that the average librarian is a Boomer and over 50, there is a gap of one to two generations between most of the profession and a growing group of our primary users, whom we all need to understand in order to serve well. The generation in question, which some call Millennials but we'll refer to as Next-Gens, is made up of people born between 1982 and 2002. At 81 million they form the largest population group since the Boomers at 87 million. The expectations and behaviors of this group will have a significant impact on the nature of the services that public and academic libraries need to plan and provide.