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."[1] 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.[2]

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 [3] 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 [4] 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 percent 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:

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 analyzed 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,[5] a quantitative tool to measure it, in 1992. Doris J. Van Kampen created a new instrument in 2004, the Multidimensional Library Anxiety Scale (MLAS) to take into account off-campus use of library resources and master's and doctoral student attitudes.[6] Gillian S. Gremmels reexamined Mellon's work and its impact on the library profession in a 2015 article. [7]

Later research

The rate of research on the topic increased dramatically after 1993.[8]

In a 2007 study of graduate students, Kwon, Onwuegbuzie and Alexander found that "weak critical thinking dispositions in the areas of self-confidence, inquisitiveness and systematicity were particularly associated with high levels of library anxiety."[9] Systematicity was defined as being disposed toward organizing, logical, focused and attentive inquiry. Unfortunately, the scope of their study did not allow these findings to be generalized to undergraduates.

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.[10] "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.

Rachel A. Fleming-May, Regina N. Mays and Rachel Radom at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville piloted a collaboration with the Volunteer Bridge Program, a summer program aimed improving retention rates of at-risk students. The libraries created a three-session instruction program used in 2012 and 2013 and assessed student learning using a pre-test and post-test. The post-test found that 91 percent of students felt more comfortable with the library after the workshops, and 81 percent reported being more likely to ask a librarian for help with research. [11]

The Washington State University Libraries has a list of strategies to help students overcome this anxiety.[12]

References

  1. ↑ Nunes, Alex (2016-04-13). "Do You Suffer from Library Anxiety?". JSTOR Daily. Retrieved 2016-04-27.
  2. ↑ Mellon, Constance (1986). "Library Anxiety: A Grounded Theory and Its Development" (PDF). College & Research Libraries. Retrieved 27 April 2016.
  3. ↑ Swope, Mary Jane; Katzer, Jeffrey (Winter 1972). "Who don't they ask questions?". RQ. 12: 161–66.
  4. ↑ Kosa, Geza (1982). "The psychological barrier between college students and the librarian". Australian Academic & Research Libraries. 13 (2): 107–12.
  5. ↑ Bostick, Sharon L. (1992). The development and validation of the library anxiety scale. ProQuest Dissertations.
  6. ↑ Van Kampen, Doris J. (2004). "Development and validation of the multidimensional library anxiety scale" (PDF). College & Research Libraries,. 65 (1).
  7. ↑ Gremmels, Gillian (2015). "Constance Mellon's "Library Anxiety": An Appreciation and a Critique" (PDF). College & Research Libraries. doi:10.5860/crl.76.3.268. Retrieved 27 April 2016.
  8. ↑ Lee, Scott W. (2011). An Exploratory Case Study of Library Anxiety and Basic Skills English Students in a California Community College District. Proquest Dissertations.
  9. ↑ Kwon, Nayhun; Onwuegbuzie, Anthony; Alexander, Linda (2007). "Critical thinking disposition and library anxiety: Affective domains on the space of information seeking and use in academic libraries" (PDF). College & Research Libraries. 68 (3).
  10. ↑ Carlile, Heather (2007). "The implications of library anxiety for academic reference services: A review of the literature" (PDF). Australian Academic & Research Libraries. Retrieved 27 April 2016.
  11. ↑ Fleming-May, Rachel A.; Mays, Regina N.; Radom, Rachel (2015). "" I Never Had to Use the Library in High School": A Library Instruction Program for At-Risk Students.". portal: Libraries and the Academy,. 15 (3). Retrieved 4 May 2016.
  12. ↑ "How to Beat Library Anxiety". 6 December 2015. Retrieved 27 April 2016.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 5/4/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.