Can’t Find Your Friends? Check the Library
Libraries aren’t what they used to be.
No more stuffy, hair-bun-bearing librarians, no more thumbing through cumbersome card catalogs, and no more getting lost in aisles of endless Encyclopedia Britannicas.
Libraries are now high-tech, high-speed information portals that offer a wealth of resources: free, online and easy to access.
Sure, libraries still have books too … tons and tons of books. But it’s not the stacks that are drawing the visitors. It’s the Internet.
And who are these visitors?
Generation Y. The 18-to-29-year-old crowd has become, almost counterintuitively, the age group that most commonly frequents public libraries, according to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
Libraries Change Face to Save Face
Whether they’re updating their Facebook accounts, Stumbling their favorite websites, doing research for a term paper, or just socializing online with their friends, the young adults of Gen Y are increasingly making a trip to the library to tune in to the Internet, particularly when their own Internet connections are slow or limited.
Libraries across the country have received virtual facelifts over the past few years in an effort to appeal to a younger crowd and to offer services the public craves. Local municipalities and non-profit organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have devoted resources and millions of dollars to technological renovations at libraries.
The result? 62 percent of Gen Y respondents in the Pew survey reported having visited public libraries within the past year. And out of 53 percent of total respondents who spent time in libraries last year, 65 percent of them said they used the Internet while they were there.
Bookworms Make Way for Surfers
Considering that over ten years ago, a survey by the Benton Foundation showed that this same age group felt libraries would eventually become less relevant, Julie Vorman of Reuters reports that the Pew survey results are surprising and exciting (“Generation Y Biggest User of U.S. Libraries, Survey Finds,” Dec. 30, 2007).
“Internet use seems to create an information hunger, and it is information-savvy young people who are most likely to visit libraries,” says Leigh Estabrook, co-author of the Pew report, in Vorman’s article.
That hunger for information is being quenched — 99 percent of libraries now have Internet access for their Web-surfing patrons, according to a USA Today piece by Anick Jesdanun (“Young Use Library Most Despite the Net,” Jan. 1, 2008).
But high-tech advancements at libraries are not the only draw for frequenting teens and young adults. As rows of shelves give way to computer desks, libraries now act as social gathering sites, offering virtual homework help, gaming software programs, and even access to virtual librarians, the online avatars of real-world librarians in the virtual-reality game Second Life, Vorman reports.
“We’re seeing a lot of conversion of what may have been stack areas, warehouse areas,” says Loriene Roy, president of the American Library Association, in Jesdanun’s USA Today article. “Libraries are creating social spaces.”