Libraries and Generation Y

From NYTimes/Reuters:

More than half of Americans visited a library in the past year with many of them drawn in by the computers rather than the books, according to a survey released on Sunday.

Of the 53 percent of U.S. adults who said they visited a library in 2007, the biggest users were young adults aged 18 to 30 in the tech-loving group known as Generation Y, the survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project said.

"These findings turn our thinking about libraries upside down," said Leigh Estabrook, a professor emerita at the University of Illinois and co-author of a report on the survey results.

"Internet use seems to create an information hunger and it is information-savvy young people who are most likely to visit libraries," she said.

Internet users were more than twice as likely to patronize libraries as non-Internet users, according to the survey.

Link: Generation Y Biggest User of Libraries: Survey.

More details on the report are here: Pew Internet: Libraries Report. 

I'm curious as to how many of those young people visit the library because they're in school or recently out of school and the library is convenient and familiar.  In the questionnaire they asked whether you've "gone to a local public library," so I guess that rules out school libraries, though it's not clear how careful they were about this.