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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.

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 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.


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