Millenial Mythology: Putting suppositions to the test in an academic library, from Pascal Lupien, Academic Liaison Librarian, University of Guelph, and Randy Oldham, System Support Technician, University of Guelph; Presented at Computers in Libraries Conference 2008
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Lupien Oldham Presentation Cil2008
1. THE MILLENIAL MYTHOLOGY: PUTTING SUPPOSITIONS TO THE TEST IN AN ACADEMIC LIBRARY Pascal Lupien plupien@uoguelph.ca Randy Oldham roldham@uoguelph.ca University of Guelph
Introduce ourselves: members of a research group at our university library charged with doing research into our students’ online behaviour, use of technology and their expectations. Our mandate was produce research to help establish priorities and to guide and inform other groups working on the development of emerging services in the library and across campus. We started off by reviewing the literature on Milennials and university students, and there’s plenty of that. But we were sceptical about some of it, and wondered about applying it to our own students, so we wanted to examine our own student population. The topic of the Millennials and their use of technology has become very popular in the library literature. But too often, assumptions are made about young people based on broad generalizations which are accepted, yet are often unsubstantiated. These assumptions sometimes lead to a jump on the bandwagon effect and to adopt the latest “in thing” to create new services that do not really respond to what patrons want or need. A deeper understanding of our younger users’ preferences and use of technology could help us to avoid this and to focus our efforts on using technology in ways that will actually meet their needs. In other words, we should not just adopt technology for the sake of using technology; they should build tools and services that match their users’ interests, needs and capabilities.
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