Library anxiety

Library anxiety refers to the "feeling that one’s research skills are inadequate and that those shortcomings should be hidden. In some students it’s manifested as an outright fear of libraries and the librarians who work there." The term stems from a 1986 article by Constance Mellon, a professor of library science in North Carolina, USA, titled "Library anxiety: A grounded theory and its development" in the College & Research Libraries journal.

Background

When Mellon published her article in 1986, the term "library anxiety" was new but the phenomenon had been observed and reported by previous library researchers. In 1972, Mary Jane Swope and Jeffrey Katzer discovered, through interviews, that students at their university were intimidated by the library and afraid to seek help from library personnel. In 1982, Geza Kosa surveyed university students in Australia and found similar results. None of these researchers had a specific term to apply to the phenomenon they were seeing until Mellon's study.

Mellon's landmark two-year qualitative research study, which included 6,000 students at a Southern university in the United States, found that 75 to 85 per cent of the students described their initial response to library research in terms of fear. Mellon used the term "library anxiety" to describe the feelings of discomfort and fear a group of undergraduate English composition students described when they were starting an information search that required using the academic library. The study revealed four primary reasons to explain feelings of LA. The students:

• were intimidated by the size of the library,
• lacked knowledge about where everything was located,
• lacked knowledge about how to begin the research process and
• lacked knowledge about what to do.

Mellon further discovered that these negative feelings often overwhelmed students to the point at which they could not function effectively in the library. It was found that the students had a feeling of inferiority when they compared their library skills to those of other students and these feelings of inadequacy were a source of shame that made them hesitant to ask library staff for help. Mellon alerted faculty outside the library that these behaviors constituted problems that needed to be addressed. She likened library anxiety to mathematical anxiety and test anxiety. She suggested library anxiety should be recognized and the anxious person provided with experiences in which they could succeed.

Mellon advocates the use of qualitative research as she reasoned it provided a deeper insight into information behavior. She comments that her study applied the rarely used methods of qualitative research to a library problem and states that while the study was important, the implications of the research technique were far greater. Mellon used the technique of "personal writing" or "journal writing" to collect data in which the writer is "talking on paper" with no concern for audience, style, grammar, or spelling which allows the writer to tap into a stream of consciousness. The students' personal writing was analysed for recurrent themes.

Impact

Ironically, despite Mellon's goal to increase the use of qualitative research methods in library science, library anxiety did not become popular as a research topic until Sharon Bostick created the Library Anxiety Scale, a quantitative tool to measure it, in 1992. In 2015, Gillian S. Gremmels reexamined Mellon's work and its impact on the library profession in a 2015 article.

Later research

The rate of research on the topic increased dramatically after 1993.

Suggestions for dealing with library anxiety

Most of the literature is written from the point of view of libraries and how they can create more welcoming environments through library instruction programs and other opportunities to interact with librarians, modifying librarian attitudes and behaviors to be seen as visible, approachable and unintimidating, and using better signage, wording directions and instructions in jargon-free terminology, and having staff wear name-tags. "Personal interaction appears to be the central component of reduction strategies and suggestions aimed at alleviating students' fears of the academic library," according to Heather Carlile.

The Washington State University Libraries has a list of strategies to help students overcome this anxiety.

References

• Mellon, Constance (1986), "Library anxiety: A grounded theory and its development", College & Research Libraries, vol. 47, no. 2, pp. 160–165, doi:10.5860/crl_47_02_160
• Onwuegbuzie, A. J., Jiao, Q. G., & Bostick, S. L. (2004). Library anxiety: Theory, research, and applications. Landham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, Inc.
• Onwuegbuzie, A. J.; Qun, G. J. (2000). "I'll go to the library later: The relationship between academic procrastination and library anxiety". College & Research Libraries. 61 (1): 45–54. doi:10.5860/crl.61.1.45.
• Qun, G.J.; Onwuegbuzie, A. J. (1998). "Perfectionism and library anxiety among graduate students". Journal of Academic Librarianship. 24 (5): 365–71.

External links

• Library Anxiety and the Distance Learning Graduate Student: A Case Study of Eastern Michigan University
• An Exploratory Case Study of Library Anxiety and Basic Skills English Students in a California Community College District