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Librarians Speak Up:
How is your library innovating to support Millennials?

Jing Xu, Reference Librarian, Shanghai Jiao Tong University Library, Shanghai, China

In 2006, our library invited students to set up the Student Management Committee and organize activities to keep younger people informed about library services. About 400 volunteers help younger users gain understanding of the Chinese Library Classification. Graduate students serve as assistant reference librarians and advise younger readers. Also the committee has assisted with library surveys to get more feedback from younger people.

www.lib.sjtu.edu.cn

Dr. Oliver Obst, Director of Medical Library, University of Muenster, Germany

We created a profile on StudiVZ, the German counterpart to Facebook and with 4 million users the largest social network in Germany. Even without other public relations efforts, the library got quickly recognized and contacted by many students. They like to use this way to ask for improvements like more books or a coffee bar. From those informal contacts, we’ve built a task force for the continuous improvement of the library.

http://zbmed.uni-muenster.de

Nigel Lees, Manager Library & Archival Services, The Royal Society of Chemistry, London, UK

The RSC Virtual Library makes it possible for our 44,000 members worldwide, especially the so-called Millennial generation, to find and use fulltext content from Elsevier, Springer, Knovel and others. Though we are making our services as Google-like as possible, we still pay great attention to relevance, quality and evaluation.

www.rsc.org/virtuallibrary      www.rsc.org/library

Sarah Kibirige, Assistant Director: Technical Services and Electronic Resources Management, Stellenbosch University Library and Information Service, South Africa

At Stellenbosch, we serve Millennials by maximizing online access and making Web/library 2.0 services such as RSS feeds and blogs available throughout our website. Knowing the importance of collaborative environments for this generation, we’ve also extended our services into course management systems. Mostly though, we’re still trying to fully comprehend the Millennial phenomena and to distinguish meaningful services from hype to best serve Millennial needs.

www.sun.ac.za/library

Ian Colford, Assistant University Librarian for Collections Development, Killam Library, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

At Dalhousie, we're meeting Millennial students where they congregate online by promoting library collections and services through LibGuides and Facebook, and are enabling Web 2.0 technologies like RSS feeds and widgets. Offline, we’ve expanded our Learning Commons to the second floor and added 50 computers.

www.library.dal.ca

Jeffrey Beall, Metadata Librarian/Assistant Professor, Auraria Library, University of Colorado Denver, USA

Ours is the only library on a campus housing a community college, state college and state university. Most students work and are commuter students. They lead busy lives and are part of the online generation. To accommodate them, we have dozens of public access terminals. Whether they need to check email, visit a social networking site or even do research, students here know there is always a computer available for them in the library.

http://library.auraria.edu

Melissa J. Allen, Technical Information Specialist, Technical Information Center, Caterpillar, Inc., Mossville, IL, USA

At Caterpillar, we have a large number of both Millennials and soon-to-retire baby boomers. The dichotomy of the two groups presents a unique challenge, as their information-seeking behaviors differ drastically. Our library is adapting to the young employees by focusing our services towards electronic technologies, and relying more on informal and instantaneous communication via instant messaging and wikis.

www.caterpillar.com

Qinghua Liu, Head of Reference Department, Northeast Normal University Library, Changchun, China

Based on Web 2.0 technology, we’ve set up a blog for online Library Reference Service. In this blog we’ve embedded the instant messenger MSN (and QQ, a popular IM among younger generations in China). Readers who need help can easily chat with librarians by clicking the MSN or QQ icon. Neither software installation nor account registration is required for this tool. It makes reference service more simple, convenient and efficient and is very well received by students.

www.library.nenu.edu.cn