Before you can target and then market your services, you need to know the people you are marketing too. Although I know some of what our youth market is like from what I see at the desk and hear from other staff, that is only part of the total picture. What aspect of youth behaviour are we not seeing because we have nothing targeting it?

The good news is that I don’t have to do the hard work of research, because others far more qualified than I have already done so. This generation of youth, commonly known as the Net Generation or Millenials, were born between 1980 and 2002 (which encompasses my children - I don’t know if that’s good or not :) )

Stephen Abram and Judy Luther in their Library Journal article “Born with the Chip”, give an awesome overview and relate it back to the impact on library services. The characteristics of this current generation are: format agnostic - they don’t care what from their information comes in; nomadic - they expect to get their information and entertainment whenever and wherever they are; multitasking - naturally able to navigate multiple applications; experiential - learn through doing; collaborative - instant messaging is the big indicator here, as well as team games and more; integrated - no separation between content and technology to them; principled - well-defined value system; adaptive - the facilities are available to assist any learning barrier; and direct - demands respect and say what they mean.

As a generation, without thinking about library services, there are enough challenges in dealing with people of these characteristics already. They know more than a lot of library staff do in terms of technology and can be intimidating in the least. However, as I said earlier, they are still part of our market and we not only need to but are obliged to serve them - with the best service possible. That means providing service which is relevant to them. Abrams and Luther layout some great recommendations in “Born with the Chip”, which are well worth investigating further.

Pew Internet is a non-profit research organisation that produces reports that explore the impact of the Internet on families, communities, work and home, daily life, education, health care, and civic and political life. Two of their reports that have come across my desk and warrant further scrutiny are “Teen Content Creators and Consumers” and “Teens and Technology”.

“Teen Content Creators…” reports that more than half of online teens are content creators, nearly 40% read blogs, older girls are most likely to blog, teen bloggers are tech savvy and heavy Net users, big music and video downloaders and will pay for it online. “Teens and Technology” further reports that nearly 90% of teens are online, half of those on a daily basis; they are technology rich, have cell phones and use SMS, use email but prefer IM. Even if you just read the executive summaries of these reports and the many others that Pew Internet have produced, you will have learned much about this generation. All these conclusions have been supported by numerous other independent reports, too numerous to mention here.

All of these studies are North American based, but with the similarities between our teens and theirs, especially in terms of technology, they are definitely worth consideration.

So, before you can serve your audience, you need to know them. Mix this research with some one-on-one with your current youth users and you should have a good idea of what they want. Mix in a bit of observation and establish relationships with your local schools and you will have an even better picture of your audience.

How to serve them? In my next post I will explore ways in which library services are successfully reaching out to their teens.