[WEB4LIB] Re: "Generation shifts" and technology

[Dobbs, Aaron]

I wonder if there is also a correlation between someone's "internet age"
(how many years one has been online - and I'm not sure that years of AOL
use should count ;) and their facility with online resources.
Similarly, one's "computer age" (years of computer experience) and, yes,
one's "library age" as well.  

Be that as it may, "GenX" and "GenY" are arbitrary misnomers as well :)
(Technically, I'm "GenX" since I was born in the late 1960s, but I
subjectively feel I have much more in common with the 1955 - 1965
cohort-which-is-not-named-and-does-not-map-to-any-official-generation
than I do with the 1965 - 1975
cohort-which-is-not-named-and-does-not-map-to-any-official-generation)

-Aaron
:-)'

"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." 
- Voltaire

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of K.G. Schneider
Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2005 9:52 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Re: "Generation shifts" and technology

I recently saw a survey Rachel Singer Gordon had posted
(http://www.lisjobs.com/nextgensurvey.htm ) and though I thought it
would gather good information for her next book, I was surprised to see
that the "generation shift" was cut across the absolute age of the
survey-taker, with 40 as a dividing line, rather than when the
survey-taker acquired his or her library degree. I feel (perhaps I am
deluded) that my MLS graduation year has a lot more to do with my
comfort level with technology than my years on this planet. The school
itself had no small influence in that area either.
In 1992, it was very adventuresome for librarians to be dialing into a
bulletin board, playing with FTP, etc., and the school even offered a
class in Pascal Programming for Librarians. But I still feel I have more
in common with anyone who graduated after 1990 than I do with other
librarians my age.

Karen G. Schneider
kgs at bluehighways.com