"Getting to know you, Getting to know all about you." Keeps playing in a loop in my head. Yesterday I heard on the news that the according to Beloit College's Mindset list, today's incomming freshman (class of 2010 already) who were born in 1988 have only known two presidents, the Soviet Union never existed, and there has always been only one Germany.

That got me thinking, many of our new house staff and third year medical students were born in 1981, do we know what their cultural frame of reference is? Here are some insights into mindset of your new medical library users, courtesy of Beloit College.

• They are the first generation to be born into Luvs, Huggies, and Pampers.
• John Lennon and John Belushi have always been dead.
• There has always been a woman on the Supreme Court, and women have always been traveling into space.
• They were born and grew up with Microsoft, IBM PCs, in-line skates, NutraSweet, fax machines, film on disks, and unregulated quantities of commercial interruptions on television.
• While they all know her children, they have no idea who "Ma Bell" was.
• They never knew Madonna when she was like a virgin.
• They have never had to worry about the packaging of Tylenol.
• Yugoslavia has never existed.
• The moonwalk is a Michael Jackson dance step, not a Neil Armstrong giant step.
• President Kennedy's assassination is as significant to them as that of Lincoln or Garfield.

So what does this mean? Well think about your library, your services, your classes, etc. If you still have a card catalog don't be shocked if they look at it like it might bite them and have no idea how to find books. Are your services such as copying and delivering (by mail or hand) the table of contents valuable to them, or do they expect to get that stuff delivered to them online? What kind of search examples are you using in your class, are they outdated for their mindset. Remember AIDS was just starting to be discovered in 1981 and CDC generally referred to it by referencing the diseases that were occurring, for example lymphadenopathy (swollen glands), although sometimes it was referred to as KSOI (Kaposi's Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections), and others medical professionals refered to it as "gay-related immune deficiency" or "gay compromise syndrome" (1981 Lancet, 2 1338-1339). Most of these new users have known AIDS as a pandemic, the flu is just something that is a threat to young, old, and immuno compromised patients. Only with the emergence of the H5N1 bird flu might they be aware of the devastating potential of the flu.

I am not saying, "Out with old and in with the new." Heck you probably have many "older" patrons who use your services too. I am just mentioning that by keeping an eye on the mindset of your patrons you can evolve and continue to provide products and services that are relevant to them and to future patrons.