Revising And Applications Study Of Library Anxiety Scale

Swope and Katzer tried to identify non-question-asking library users who appear confused, frustrated, or lost and to discover the causes of this behavior in 1972. They found that 65% of those users who had questions would not ask a librarian for help. The major reasons given were dissatisfaction with the past service of the librarian, the question was too simple for the librarian, and that they did not want to bother the librarian. The researchers labeled this phenomenon as a"people problem."Up through the early 1980s, there has been a general lack of studies aimed to understanding how users interact with information and libraries from a psychological perspective. This situation has motivated some scholars to focus on exploring the phenomenon of library anxiety.Mellon's study of undergraduate students led to the formulation of a grounded theory of library anxiety in 1986. In her seminal two-year qualitative study involving 6000 students, Mellon noted that between 75% and 85% of undergraduate students described their initial library research experiences in terms of anxiety. She states that students'fears were due to a feeling that other students were competent at library use while they alone were incompetent, that this lack of competence was somehow shameful and must be kept hidden, and that asking questions would lead to a revelation of their incompetence.Library anxiety may arise from a lack of self-confidence in conducting research, lack of prior exposure to academic libraries, and inability to see the relevance of libraries in one's field of interest or career path. Library anxious students tend to experience interfering responses during one or more stages of the information-search process. As much, anxious library users tend to focus less of their time, energy, and attention on the task itself, thereby impeding the attainment of their goals.Library anxiety is situation-specific inasmuch as the symptoms only...