Millennials, Gen Z flock to Sonoma County libraries as preferred ‘third place’

Younger generations are oft maligned for being ultra connected to the virtual world, their digital habits sometimes perceived as the death knell to legacy traditions.

But one such tradition, going to the library, isn’t getting left behind in this digital age — nationally and in Sonoma County.

Millennials and Gen Zers are going to the library, and they’re doing so in big numbers.

Late Tuesday morning, the Central Santa Rosa Library in downtown was buzzing. People were sitting in front of the building’s floor-to-ceiling windows, reading, filling out paperwork, eating lunch or just relaxing.

The central library is often busy, “but it's spread out more throughout the day,” said Jessica Hoover, the location’s manager. It’s the mid-morning rushes, the late afternoon or early evenings that really bustle.

The number of physical and digital items borrowed from the Sonoma County Library system have increased over the last six years, from 3,719,447 in 2018 — the earliest year for which data is available — to 4,087,779 items in 2023.

As millennials and Generation Z cohorts age, they are looking to the library as a resource. But also, according to the American Library Association, younger generations are reading and libraries are their preferred “third place.”

The concept of the “third place” was created by sociologist Ray Oldenburg and defined as a place of importance where people may gather other than at home and work.

Research recently published by the American Library Association found that 54% of U.S. millennials and Gen Zers visited a physical library in the past 12 months.

Part of this is because millennials, defined as people age 27-42, and Gen Zers, ages 11-26, are becoming caregivers to young children. But it’s also because the library is a space where people can access information, technology and community for free.

Borrowing trends

About 68% of all items checked out at Sonoma County Library, which comprises 14 branch locations across the county, were physical items in 2023.

And millennial and Gen Z borrowers checked out physical items at a higher rate compared with other age groups, at 65% and 75%, respectively, according to data provided by Dara Bradds, deputy director of Sonoma County Library.

Last year, people checked out over 4 million physical and digital items, Bradds said. In 2019, people checked out almost 3 million physical items from the library, but the pandemic staunched that practice until it picked up again in 2021.

In 2019, digital items accounted for a mere 22% of the total items checked out. In 2023, it accounted for a third of all borrowing.

That tracks for Hank Raan, a Santa Rosa mail carrier and a millennial.

“I love the libraries,” he said.

It was the pandemic that got him back into the library. And now, he said, he uses it constantly.

He checks out two to three audiobooks per week and listens to them while doing his mail route, he said. When the audiobooks aren’t available, or he feels like the storytelling would be better read than listened to, he checks out the actual book.

‘Third place’

Raan said he is a bibliophile. The 41-year-old grew up in Montana, “way out of town,” and didn’t get to visit the library often, he said. He and his family moved to California when he was 12.

“I didn't know any other kids. I had nowhere to go. So my parents would just drop me off at the library,” he added, “they knew it was a safe place to leave me for an hour or two where I could kind of have my own space, do my own thing.”

Raan said in high school he would visit the library to get tutoring for classes while his parents were in college trying to get better jobs.

For Janay Vedder, the library is her “third place.” She goes to the Central Library in downtown Santa Rosa after she gets out of school. She said she likes the teen section for its cozy booths where she can work on her homework in a safe, well-lit place.

Vedder, nearly 13 years old, said her dad recommended the location, where she could work on homework and wait while her parents finished their late shifts at work.

The library acts a place for people to go to and exist within, unmediated by financial transactions or expectations of use. Some researchers say they’re necessary for community health.

A 2019 article published by University of Michigan researchers and funded by the National Institute of Health raised alarm bells over the consequential impacts on collective public health as third places close.

Researchers found that establishments that can act as third spaces, such as libraries, are closing.

But in Sonoma County, the number of permanent libraries are growing. The Roseland regional library is temporary but soon to be a permanent service in the southwest corner of Santa Rosa.

And the libraries are now open seven days a week — a change that came about as voters approved Measure Y in November 2016. That measure, which added a 1/8 of a cent sales tax to support the libraries, will return to the ballot this November.

“(Measure Y) allowed us to increase our hours, increase access, expand our collections, expand our programs and services, and maintain library facilities,” Bradds said.

A library of things

These days, libraries aren’t just books.

Hoover, the branch manager of the Central Santa Rosa Library and the History and Genealogy library, is originally from Knoxville, Tennessee, and she’s been working in libraries for about 10 years.

She said, in that time, she’s “shifted from the understanding that libraries are about books to realizing that libraries have many services and really function in many ways in the community.”

“A library of things,” as she calls it, includes items like hot spots, technology equipment, practice tests for academic and professional exams, like SATs and MCATs, a seed library and a recording studio.

Hoover said she remembered helping a patron recently “and they mentioned they were studying for the MCAT, and how expensive the study guide books are.”

She said, “we have a Learning Express Library,” a digital resource that allows patrons to do high-stakes practice tests with their library card for free.

“When we remove financial barriers to information, then more people have access, more people are able to engage and connect with information that will not only help individuals, whether that's in career advancement, or getting a job or getting job skills,” she said, “but also it makes us more connected as a community.”

A library for all

Raan recalled last summer’s protests at several of the Sonoma County libraries over the drag queen story hours. Anti-LGBTQ+ and extremist Christians protested the events.

Raan said he went up to a religious protester who was Latino, “and I was talking about representation and how, you know, Black Panther was so big, such a big deal for minority communities.”

Raan said to the man, “and now you're trying to take that away from the queer community, why would you do that?”

He said the protester got really quiet and walked away, “and he never talked to me again that day.”

The protest, said Hoover, created a space to educate people on the mission and goals of the public library system.

“We serve patrons of all backgrounds, abilities, and identities. And the library has a responsibility to serve everyone, especially groups that may have been underserved by public institutions in the past,” she said.

Hoover’s earliest library memory is of story time, when she was in preschool.

“We would go, walk a couple blocks to go to the local public library, and the librarian would do a story time, and that was so magical to me,” she said. “I remember as a child being mesmerized, of course, by the books, but also by the rhythms and rhymes of a story time.”

That experience, she said, “has informed my whole career, really.”

This feeling of belonging as a young library user has stuck with her, she said, “and I hope that we replicate that experience for all of our central library patrons.

Vedder and Raan were unaware that they were part of a national trend. They just use the library in a way that meets their needs.

Kathryn Styer Martínez is a reporting intern for the Press Democrat. She can be reached at kathryn.styermartinez@pressdemocrat.com or 707-521-5337.