NextGen Librarians: Interviews with RUSA Interns

Abstract

Because I knew the goals of my Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) presidency would cluster around encouraging membership by new librarians, I took the opportunity as vice president of RUSA to appoint interns to all the RUSA-level committees and to nominate some for American Library Association-level (ALA) committees. My second column takes a peek at the people who filled these positions. I will outline the interns’ opinions relating to Millennial and NextGen librarians and their characteristics and discuss their views about librarianship, both as it exists today and its prospects for the future. In addition to being termed NextGen or Millennial Generation, this demographic cohort is sometimes referred to as NetGen or Gen Y.1 I would like to thank the new RUSA committee interns for their time in responding to my questionnaire, and I would also like to thank Megan Perez, who is the RUSA Spectrum Scholar this year, for his comments relating to their responses. (The list of questions is included in the appendix.) Some of the interns’ thoughts and ideas, along with Megan’s, are included throughout this piece. In the July/August 2005 issue of Public Libraries,

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