Talking bout my g-g-generation? Wait which one?
One of the hot trends in Library Science literature is to write about the needs of the various generations using the library. Some of them discuss the special needs of retirees (understandable), grade school students (of course) and high school students (again, a nature group to focus on), but more and more articles have moved away from the specific needs of these groups to frame the discussion in terms of generations. There are the Baby Boomers (my parents), Gen X (myself and my siblings, well, I thought my sisters were Gen X as we're 2 and 4 years apart in the mid 70s) and this new generations (Gen Y or the Millennials). This Friday the librarians for the School of Management ordered the American Generations series which included:
What I find interesting is that the New Strategist has put the demarcation of generations right on the birth year of my family's middle child. According to this series I am a different generation from my sisters and anyone else who started school after I was in third grade.
I understand that generations are for statistical and marketing purposes and really have no bearing on reality, but I think cutting the generation so fine really proves how outdated our thinking about age groups has become. In some ways I have a lot more in common with those born in the mid 80s than those in the mid 60s, but marketers see me as the same core audience as someone who may have been a baby or toddler at Woodstock.
The good news is that I can complain about these new Millennials with their computers and e-mail and ignorance of news from newspapers with my boss all the while texting with those same Millennials about the Baby Boomer manager who whines about how it's so hard to use a photocopier (because he's old and this is new-fangled technology, not because, you know, copiers tend to be confusing and counter-intuitive for everyone).
- Older Americans
:A Changing Market
- Baby Boom
- Generation X
- Millennials
What I find interesting is that the New Strategist has put the demarcation of generations right on the birth year of my family's middle child. According to this series I am a different generation from my sisters and anyone else who started school after I was in third grade.
I understand that generations are for statistical and marketing purposes and really have no bearing on reality, but I think cutting the generation so fine really proves how outdated our thinking about age groups has become. In some ways I have a lot more in common with those born in the mid 80s than those in the mid 60s, but marketers see me as the same core audience as someone who may have been a baby or toddler at Woodstock.
The good news is that I can complain about these new Millennials with their computers and e-mail and ignorance of news from newspapers with my boss all the while texting with those same Millennials about the Baby Boomer manager who whines about how it's so hard to use a photocopier (because he's old and this is new-fangled technology, not because, you know, copiers tend to be confusing and counter-intuitive for everyone).
posted by john at
3:16 PM
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