Library patrons are a very diverse bunch. Stand any two next to each other, and nine times out of ten the only thing they will have in common is that they both patronize the library. The characteristic that varies the most is age—most libraries profess to serve infants, senior citizens, and every age group in between. In my time as a librarian, however, I have noticed that “Generation Y”, or people between the ages of 18 and 30, make up a very small amount of the people I serve every day.

It’s not that twenty-somethings aren’t using the library. In fact, some research suggests that they are more likely than the older generations to use library services to find solutions for problems they encounter in life. What concerns me is that, while they may drop by for help finding a job or to pick up tax forms, they aren’t using the library for its most basic service: access to free books.

As an eighties-baby myself, I see this in my personal life as well as my professional life. None of my friends get their reading material from the library. My own sisters, avid readers all, buy their books at chain stores and politely refuse when I offer to teach them to use Inter Library Loan! Not only that, but I am convinced that twenty-somethings who read for recreation are in the minority. This is probably because those who are in college view reading as a chore (I know I did), and those who are just entering the work force are too busy submitting resumes and worrying about paying off student loans to spend time on any luxuries, least of all cozying up with the latest NY Times Bestseller.

I like to argue that checking out books from the library not only saves the environment, but it also saves the library user a good chunk of change. I try to keep track of how much I read with GoodReads.com, and recently I thought it would be a fun experiment to add up all the books I had read in the last year and calculate the amount of many it would have cost me if I had bought them at Barnes & Noble instead of checking them out from the library. I would have spent about $1,300 on my reading habit last year alone. Yikes.

My husband thinks this a terrible argument; because as a librarian, I a) am required to read more than the average person, and b) as I work in a library, I have easy access to library services like interlibrary loan and am free of hassles like late fines. I simply have easier access and more incentive to read for fun than the average person my age. While I’ll admit he is right on that point, I won’t back down from my stance that my peers are simply not reading for fun, and when they do they are purchasing books with money that could be better spent elsewhere (i.e. those pesky student loans).

I think it is important for libraries to market more to the twenty-something crowd. Libraries tend to pay a lot of attention to the extremes—early literacy and services to senior citizens. All age groups both need and deserve a daily dose of free reading, and we need to find ways to convince Generation Y to take advantage of what their public library offers!  

Posted by: Eva Mays