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Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2008, 3:3 

 

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   Evidence Based Library and Information Practice  
 

 
 

Classic 

 

Constance Mellon Demonstrated that College Freshmen Are Afraid of Academic 

Libraries 

 
A review of:  

Mellon, Constance A. “Library Anxiety: A Grounded Theory and Its Development.” College & 

Research Libraries 47 (1986): 160-65. 

 

Reviewed by: 

Edgar Bailey 

Reference/Instruction Librarian and Associate Professor 

Phillips Memorial Library, Providence College 

Providence, Rhode Island, United States of America 

E-mail: ebailey@providence.edu  

 

Received: 15 May 2008     Accepted: 29 August 2008 
 

 
© 2008 Bailey. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons 

Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, 

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 

 

 
Abstract 

 

Objective – To better understand the 

feelings of college freshmen engaged in their 

first research project using an academic 

library. 

 

Design – Interpretive study involving 

analysis of personal writing describing the 

students’ research process and their 

reactions to it. 

 

Setting – A medium-sized public university 

in the southeastern United States. 

 

Subjects – Students in freshman English 

courses. 

 

Methods – English instructors assigned 

students to maintain search journals in 

which the students recorded a detailed 

description of their research process and the 

feelings they experienced while conducting 

research. In addition, students had to write 

an end-of- semester, in-class essay in which 

they discussed their initial reactions to the 

research project and how their feelings 

evolved over the semester. The journals and 

essays were analyzed using the “constant 

comparative” method developed by Glaser 

and Strauss to identify “recurrent ‘themes’” 

(161). 

 



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Main Results – 75 to 85 per cent of the 

students reported feelings of “fear or 

anxiety” when confronted with the research 

assignment. More specifically, they 

expressed a sense of being “lost”. This 

feeling derived from four causes: “(1) the 

size of the library; (2) a lack of knowledge 

about where things were located; (3) how to 

begin, and (4) what to do” (162). Spurred by 

the question of why students did not seek 

help from their professors or a librarian, 

Mellon re-examined the data and uncovered 

two additional prevalent feelings. Most 

students tended to believe that their fellow 

students did not share their lack of library 

skills. They were ashamed of what they 

considered their own inadequacy and were, 

therefore, unwilling to reveal it by asking 

for assistance (162). 

 

Conclusions – The original objective of 

Mellon’s study was to gain information that 

would be useful in improving bibliographic 

instruction in her library. The discovery of 

the extent of students’ apprehension when 

confronted with a library research 

assignment came as something of a surprise. 

Mellon later noted that, at the time she was 

conducting her research, she first became 

aware of the symptoms of math anxiety and 

realized that they closely resembled those 

she had identified in students confronting a 

library research assignment. At that point 

she coined the now widely used term 

“library anxiety” (Mellon, “Library Anxiety 

and the Non-Traditional Student” 79). She 

further realised that the research on math 

anxiety suggested the syndrome could be at 

least partially alleviated by simply 

acknowledging its existence to students. As 

a result, instruction librarians began openly 

discussing the affective aspects of library 

research in their classes, assuring students 

that their feelings of apprehension were 

both “common and reasonable” (164). They 

also devoted more conscious effort to 

presenting themselves as caring and 

approachable people who genuinely 

understood students’ feelings and wanted to 

help them. In addition, English faculty 

began devoting more class time to teaching 

the research process, even spending some 

out-of-class time in the library working with 

reference librarians to assist students. 

 

Commentary 

       

Mellon summarized a very substantial two-

year study in a remarkably brief article 

which failed to provide some important 

details. For example, it is unclear exactly 

how many students participated in the 

study or whether they all provided all 

requested data. Mellon is also not very 

specific in describing how she applied the 

constant comparative method. She never 

actively pursued the findings summarized 

in her seminal article, noting that “my 

personal research moved in another 

direction” (Onwuegbuzie, Jiao, and Bostick 

ix). Nevertheless, her work caught the 

attention of other researchers who would 

seek ways to test her theory empirically. The 

first of these was Sharon L. Bostick, then a 

doctoral student at Wayne State University, 

whose dissertation research focused on 

developing a reliable and valid quantitative 

measure of library anxiety applicable to 

undergraduate and graduate students at all 

levels. The result of her research was the 

Library Anxiety Scale, a 43-question, 5-point 

Likert scale questionnaire. This instrument 

was designed to measure what Bostick’s 

research had discovered were the five major 

factors affecting library anxiety: Barriers 

with Staff; Affective Barriers; Comfort with 

the Library; Knowledge of the Library, and 

Mechanical Barriers. (Onwuegbuzie, Jiao, 

and Bostick 311-315). 

 

Most subsequent research on library anxiety 

has been based more on Bostick’s work than 

on Mellon’s original study;  in fact, the 

Library Anxiety Scale “has been used in 

virtually every quantitative study” 

(Onwuegbuzie, Jiao, and Bostick 1). Two 



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particularly prolific scholars have done 

much of the work: Anthony Onwuegbuzie, 

a professor in the Education Counseling and 

Leadership Department at Sam Houston 

State University and Qun G Jiao, a librarian 

at Baruch College. Together with Bostick, in 

2004 they co-authored a book, Library 

Anxiety: Theory, Research and Applications, 

which summarizes the research findings to 

that point. The book describes in detail the 

development of the Library Anxiety Scale, 

discusses the research based on it and offers 

suggestions for reduction or prevention of 

library anxiety. 

 

Onwuegbuzie, Jiao and others have studied 

both the symptoms and the effects of library 

anxiety. These studies have confirmed not 

only that library anxiety is prevalent but 

that it can have a debilitating effect on the 

quality of student research. Expanding on 

Mellon’s original work with college 

freshmen, researchers have examined the 

incidence of the syndrome in minorities and 

foreign students and looked for differences 

based on gender, age, educational level or 

learning style. Numerous studies have used 

other measurement scales to correlate 

library anxiety with various personality 

traits. The correlation between library 

anxiety and other anxieties such as math, 

statistics, writing and foreign language has 

been examined. 

 

Of course, this research would have little 

practical value if it did not provide some 

guidance in eliminating or at least reducing 

the extent and intensity of library anxiety. 

Onwuegbuzie, Jiao and Bostick’s book 

includes a chapter on “prevention, 

reduction and intervention”. Suggestions 

are grouped in three main areas: 

improvements to the physical environment, 

library instruction, and effective reference 

service. Many of the suggestions related to 

environment and reference do not appear to 

be based primarily on the library anxiety 

research. Virtually all of them have 

appeared frequently in the literature of 

academic librarianship and most fail to 

distinguish between those interventions 

focused specifically on library anxiety and 

those designed simply to improve the 

library experience for all users. In the area of 

library instruction, the authors stress, as did 

Mellon, the importance of recognizing and 

deliberately addressing the affective 

elements of the research process in all 

library instruction. They also argue that 

specific, targeted instruction is most 

effective in reducing anxiety because anxiety 

is situation specific (Onwuegbuzie, Jiao, and 

Bostic 257-261). 

 

A 2007 literature review indicates that the 

pace of research on library anxiety may have 

slowed somewhat since the publication of 

Library Anxiety: Theory, Research and 

Applications (Carlile). However, as with so 

many areas of library research, the question 

most requiring examination today is the 

impact of technology. Onwuegbuzie, Jiao, 

and Bostick readily acknowledge this, 

noting the change from “the location specific 

library environment to more open, virtual 

information settings” and asserting that the 

Library Anxiety Scale needs to be modified 

to reflect this change (Onwuegbuzie, Jiao, 

and Bostic 289).  Do today’s students, many 

of whom display considerable, if often 

misplaced, confidence in their own ability to 

locate information online and who may 

conduct most if not all of their research 

without even entering the library, 

experience the same anxiety when 

confronted with a research assignment as 

did Mellon’s poor freshmen over twenty 

years ago?  This question deserves an 

examination it has yet to receive. 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited 

 



Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2008, 3:3 

 

97 

 

Carlile, Heather. “The Implications of 

Library Anxiety for Academic 

Reference Services: A Review of the 

Literature.”  Australian Academic 

and Research Libraries 38 (2007): 

129-47. 

 

Mellon, Constance A. “Library Anxiety and 

the Non-Traditional Student.”  

Reaching and Teaching Diverse 

Library User Groups. Ed. Teresa B. 

Mensching. Ann Arbor, MI: Pierian 

Press, 1989. 77-81. 

 

Onwuegbuzie, Anthony J., Qun G. Jiao, and 

Sharon L. Bostick. Library Anxiety: 

Theory, Research, and Applications. 

Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 

2004.