Library Anxiety: A Grounded Theory and Its Development

TLDR

The study explored students’ feelings toward library use for research. The authors analyzed students’ writing from two years of composition courses for recurring themes. Seventy‑five to eighty‑five percent of students reported fear, and the analysis yielded a grounded theory of library anxiety characterized by perceived skill inadequacy, shame, and the risk of exposure.

Abstract

This qualitative study explored the feelings of students about using the library for research. Personal writing, collected in beginning composition courses over a two-year period, was analyzed for recurrent themes. It was found that 75 to 85 percent of the students in these courses described their initial response to library research in terms of fear. Three concepts emerged from these descriptions: (1) students generally feel that their own library-use skills are inadequate while the skills of other students are adequate, (2) the inadequacy is shameful and should be hidden, and (3) the inadequacy would be revealed by asking questions. A grounded theory of library anxiety was constructed from these data.