We Were There Too...

Sometimes, I forget how I felt being a graduate student and posed with an assignment that I did not understand. Memories of being in tears, confused, and not knowing who to talk to, afraid that my instructors would think I was lazy or not capable were all buried away. These flashbacks to grad school were prompted by a conversation I had with a fellow faculty member after a meeting yesterday. One of our students had come to her in tears because she was not able to find an article for her class assignment. She searched for hours and tried to remember the different training sessions she had attended, but just could not come up with relevant results. My first reaction was why didn’t she call and ask for help? There is so much I could have shown her. It then dawned on me that maybe there was a lot I could have shown her – but would it have been too much?

Our library offers a wealth of resources, tips, and tricks for finding information. The challenge is recognizing when we are offering so much that we throw someone (especially a new researcher or graduate student) into information overload and feed their library anxiety. CINAHL searching may be a breeze for me and I can list about half a dozen resources where to find more help, but this is not the case for many of our library users.

Library anxiety is not a new concept (a search for "Library Anxiety" in Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts with Full Text returns results dating back to the late 1980's). I cannot image a librarian who’s goal is to scare library users away. We are here help and alleviate anxiety. In my attempts to combat this issue, I’m exploring the use of a wiki to consolidate the 50+ help pages we have and allow for easier use. Also, in conjunction to the lectures I conduct, I’m also going to continue offering group lab times and individualized consultations. And speaking of lectures, I’m going to start slowing things down and analyzing the content: what do my students need to know compared to what I want them to know?

There is always more to learn about library anxiety and student’s research behaviors and patterns. In addition to reading the literature and incorporating what we ourselves have learned, perhaps what we all need to do is remember back to our grad school days and how we felt as students. What helped us get through those times may better enable us to change our current practices.