Philipsburg Jubilee Library (PJL), with the assistance of a visiting student, will launch a 3 week survey with the goal to determine (1) how it can effectively communicate its services to young adults and (2) how it can further accommodate the educational and recreational needs of young adults.
This research is a follow up research of Jimmy Challenger’s 2002 marketing research, which focused only on the adult population on St. Maarten (ages 20 and above). This current research will focus on the young adult population on St. Maarten (ages 11 through 19), mainly high school students. The aim is to get all high schools involved, as well as the recent high school graduates who attend NIPA and USM.“This research is important for us because it will give us an idea how this age group uses the library and how they value our services. The outcome of this research will give us tools to improve our communication with the young adults and will give us a clearer perspective on the information and recreational needs of this age group. The library sees its materials as great value for high schools students and other young adults. A significant group of youngsters already makes use of our services on a daily basis and there are others who hardly ever visit the library. We hope that these schools understand the importance of this research and will be open to participation,” said library director Monique Alberts.
Some research objectives include carrying out a survey among the students to determine factors such as their media habits, interests and degree of library visitation, and carrying out interviews and surveys among professionals of secondary and higher education institutions as to ascertain their views on the research topics. At the end of it all PJL hopes to understand how it can further accommodate both the recreational and education needs of the young adults and effectively communicate that it can and will meet these needs through the services that it provides. “When I was growing up I often visited the library, to read and work on projects. For me it was a place where I could get my work done. Now that I think back on it, I wish that there were more educational activities in which I could have partaken since I visited the library on a weekly basis. I wish this to be the case for today’s and future young adults,” said Berry.
