Net Gen? Gen Y? Gen M? All are labels we've heard applied to the generation ranging in age from adolescents just entering or about to enter high school, to those just joining the work force.
Whatever they're called, they have particular, technology driven learning styles, which are examined in Teaching Generation M: A Handbook for Librarians and Educators. A team of experts defines Gen Ms (the M stands for "millennial"), and looks at the culture surrounding them-social networking, services like YouTube and Google, video games, webcomics, and more. Also discussed are ways to engage Gen M learners by making new technology part of their educational experience.
Librarians, for our part, "have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create a new future," as one of the contributors puts it, by embracing, supporting, and even helping to drive new search behaviors, new standards of media literacy, and new expectations.
Indexed. 368p. PBK. $85 from Neal-Schuman (978-155570-667-8)
Libraries Year-by-Year
Josephine Smith's Chronology of Librarianship, published in 1968, covered the field from the first century C.E. to 1959.
Jeffrey M. Wilhite's
Chronology of Librarianship: 1960-2000, starts up where Smith left off. Each year's treatment is arranged by category ("Contemporary Events," "ALA," "Library of Congress," etc.). Just about anything that might be of interest in the library world is included. For each event, Wilhite supplies a one-or two-sentence description and a source.
It's interesting to take a look backward, especially at events that fall under "Technology." The year 1960, for example, saw the introduction of both "a new acoustical cabinet to muffle typewriter noise" and the concept of hypertext.
Indexed. 265p. $75 from Scarecrow (978-9-8108 5255-6)
Something Special
Of all library programs, the Special Collections department might seem the least likely to jump onto the 2.0 bandwagon. Not so, say Beth M. Whittaker and Lynne M. Thomas in Special Collections 2.0: New Technologies for Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Archival Collections. They conducted a survey among "cultural heritage professionals" and discovered that, despite concern that new technologies are a distraction, many in the field are already finding ways in which Web 2.0 supports the traditional mission to collect and preserve.
Tools such as blogs, wikis, and media sharing facilitate professional communication and help make collections more visible. They also, incidentally, create new preservation challenges.
Indexed. 150p. PBK. $45 from Libraries Unlimited (978-1-59158-720-0)
