
'Library Anxiety' and What Librarians Do to Help - diodorus
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-strange-affliction-of-library-anxiety-and-what-librarians-do-to-help
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ajuc
I've read almost every book (certainly over 90%) in my local village library
when I was a kid (no internet = lots of time). It was quite small library, and
you could go between the shelves and choose something by yourself which I
still think is great. I hate libraries where you can't just go choose sth
without knowing what exactly. Half the books were old and had handmade gray
paper covers over them with handwritten titles and authors. I loved it. So
it's not that I'm anxious about libraries.

I used huge university library like 5 times at most, because I could spend a
few hours going to library, waiting in queues, waiting for the book, etc, and
then having to remember to give it back, or I could just pirate the book in 5
minutes without standing up from my chair.

Piracy is the ideal library. It's more convenient than going to library, and
more convenient than buying a book or even ebook. We should just stop
pretending and find a way to fund authors with that in mind. And the
immorality of it is hard to justify, when it's basically "I can get this book
legally for free anyway, just wasting my time and restricting access to
others".

~~~
c0nsumer
This is because, outside of the object fetishization of books, they are really
just a transport/storage layer. It's the content which matters, and as with
other content, making it convenient is important. Your local library as a kid
was sufficiently convenient, so you used it. Your university library wasn't,
so you went elsewhere.

~~~
stinkytaco
On a slight tangent into object fetishization.

I work with ebooks a lot in my job and I'm often asked if books are dead, if
they will die, or why they are not dead. Ebook growth has leveled off
significantly as devices to read them became ubiquitous and cheap, so its sits
more or less flat at about 35% of the market (give or take).

I often turn the question on the asker and ask them to analyze a book like its
a piece of technology. It's lightweight, extremely durable (survives a five
foot drop to concrete no problem) and inexpensive to replace. It's UI is
really unmatched since we've been taught it since childhood, but on an
objective scale it's easy to jump to exactly where you want (though difficult
to search). It's resolution is fantastic and I've never tested it, but I've
heard the battery life is great. It's a wonderful single use device, and
single use devices certainly still have a place (after all, you can make toast
under your broiler, but plenty of people still have toasters).

End of tangent.

~~~
pavel_lishin
To carry your tangent onwards...

Books are great, but are really quite feature-poor. You frequently need to
install add-ons to get even the most basic capability - like bookmarking, or
increasing font size. You definitely don't get search, a built-in dictionary,
or the ability to trivially share excerpts.

All in all, I would definitely recommend this product to users with good
eyesight and memory, but other potential users may want to go ahead and
upgrade to ebooks.

~~~
stinkytaco
Perhaps, but the add-ons are incredibly easy to use and flexible based on user
needs. Need colors for your bookmarks? What about inspirational slogans or
funny pictures? Want to use your font increasing plugin on a different book or
even a non-book item like your food packaging or crafts? All easily done. You
don't need to get your add-ons or books from a single, central repository.

Finally, though search is lacking, users have developed some clever ways to
overcome that issue over time including indexing and tables of contents.

------
ashark
> Some students in masters programs, says Allen Foresta, Senior Librarian at
> Columbia University's graduate Teachers College, “managed to get through
> undergraduate without really being required to use a library, which is kind
> of astonishing to me.”

Thanks to Google Books, the good ol' high school research paper standby of
"write from bad sources (Wikipedia, these days, or from a _single_ decent
source) then find good ones for the stuff you wrote until you hit the minimum
reference count" also works for (at least most) undergraduate papers. You just
need search and the free samples—full book and leaving your room not required.
Bonus: it's also easier to get generated citations (for the real books, not as
web resources) than manually entering the data from physical books.

~~~
btgeekboy
You don't even need to get that sketchy. With services like ACM providing
their research libraries at student prices, you can have all sorts of papers
easily downloaded from the comfort of your dorm/whatever.

Personally, I only really went to the library when I was doing Master's
research, and there were a few specific books I needed on graph theory. Went
in, got them, and that was it. Everything else I was able to easily and
legally do online.

~~~
maccard
When I needed books from my Uni library, I normally had to request them from
stacks, so I didn't even need to go into the library to get them. I'd just
order them the night before, they get delivered at 8am, and I pick them up at
the library front desk.

~~~
sedachv
> When I needed books from my Uni library, I normally had to request them from
> stacks, so I didn't even need to go into the library to get them.

Is that for reserved course items? A library where you had to request
everything would be completely useless. In my experience you miss out on 80%
of interesting books if you do not browse the shelves. Amazon, Worldcat, etc
are useless for discovery, particularly for anything published before 1980.
Google Books is a little better. Frequently when visiting a new city or town I
will drop in on a library to browse the mathematics shelves and take note of
any interesting books I should read later. Used bookstores are also
interesting but most have no math books.

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jccalhoun
>college students in particular are prone to library anxiety because they
believe their research skills are inadequate

because their skills are inadequate. Either research shills aren't taught or
the students don't listen because too often my college students have little
idea how to research if it doesn't show up in the first few results of google.

There is also the fact that researching can take a while. If the perfect
source doesn't show up right away then it might take a while to find it.
Students don't know how to do this or don't want to put in the effort before
they give up.

I try to teach my students how to do research but it isn't really part of my
class topic so I can't spend too much time on it. It is also an uphill battle
when so many of my students seem to still think that all .org web sites are
still organizations and therefore more credible than .com.

>Once students make it past the lobby, it can be hard to locate a librarian.

But maybe I'm a bad example myself because although I have a phd I have never
asked a librarian for help researching a topic.

------
veddox
Oh my goodness - it never occurred to me that a library could be scary. As a
book lover, I was positively thrilled the first time I entered my university's
3-million-book-library...

Although having said that, I can absolutely empathize with a library that big
being confusing (especially when parts of it are spread all over town).
Thankfully, our university library provides short introductory courses on how
to use a research library, and there are brochures lying around everywhere
that cover the fundamental stuff.

~~~
crispyambulance
I find it very hard to believe as well. I've always seen libraries as a place
to relax and spend seemingly endless unstructured time browsing and reading
guided only by curiosity.

I can imagine a slight amount of anxiety back when CARD CATALOGS were
commonplace and one had to understand the indexing system (the dewey decimal
system), scribble down the numbers onto slips of paper, hand them to a surly
librarian and then wait and wait.

~~~
sp332
This is about college students who aren't there for unstructured reading. They
have specific research goals they want to accomplish, and that's why they get
anxiety when confronted with giant unfamiliar collections.

~~~
veddox
That doesn't change much, IMO. Sure, finding the exact book you need in a
collection of several million can seem daunting, but after you've learnt the
system, it takes about three minutes (most of which is walking time). And
learning the system isn't hard either, at least in my library, it's a matter
of minutes.

So as far as I can see, there is no real excuse except "I'm not used to books
because they're not the Internet".

~~~
hueving
>Sure, finding the exact book you need in a collection of several million can
seem daunting

They don't know the exact book they need. That's where things go south. Any
idiot can type the title into most library search systems now. The problem
students have is when you ask something that requires them to figure out which
books they should look in themselves.

------
camtarn
> "...You have to figure it out on your own—where are the books?" Though
> Butler Library underwent extensive renovations in the early 2000s, it
> remained confusing. "The architect who designed the renovation did not want
> to put signage up in the lobby that said 'This is where you go for this,'"
> says Mills. "He thought that would be too much like an airport."

 _headdesk_

------
stinkytaco
Perhaps library anxiety exists, but I also think this article misses the fact
that anxiety or not, people will tend to take the path with the least
friction. Right now that's Google and Wikipedia. These are both huge
accomplishments in the dissemination of human knowledge and libraries should
pursuing strategies that work with them or like them instead of around them.

As a librarian, my primary criticism of the profession is its need to reinvent
itself. Librarians are convinced of their irrelevance and their response is
offering more and varied services (3D printing, for example) rather than
pushing the services they do have into new spaces.

For example, linked data initiatives like RDF would do wonders to make unique
library collections more accessible, and possibly more searchable. Or work
with universities and vendors to break down the silos of journal vendors to
integrate them better into library catalogs, and more development of those
tools to make discoverability a priority.

------
dredmorbius
Worldcat is your friend: [https://worldcat.org](https://worldcat.org)

Odds are good your institution (or one near you) uses it. 2 billion items
indexed.

DDG bang search !worldcat

Title specifier: "ti:<terms>"

Author specifier: "au:<terms>"

E.g., !worldcat au:rowling ti:hallows

------
agentgt
I wonder if this "anxiety" is correlated to personality type. I personally
find libraries extremely relaxing and I'm not particularly academic or
intelligent albeit I appreciate the pursuits. I bet other INTP types are
similar.

Same with museums. My wife finds them either boring or anxiety provoking as
she feels it will take forever to cover all of exhibits. I on the other hand
prefer to take my time and actually read the notes on the exhibits.

It sort of boils down to time. Libraries and museums make me feel I have all
the time in the world to explore and learn with out judgement, pressure,
and/or deadlines.

------
Kenji
When I first glanced at 'Library Anxiety', I thought they meant anxiety about
adding another library dependency to your project, making it dependent on the
API, maintenance and updates of yet another developer.

------
bhewes
The University of Oklahoma library is one of the few things I feel in love
with while in college. I can see the library anxiety problem given the
ridiculousness of the search function. And good luck actual talking to the
librarian most of the time it was just a student employee. So it is good to
see articles like this coming up to help people not willing to trudge through
figuring about how the library works on their own.

That said the OU library is first place I will give any significant money. I
love that place.

------
gravypod
What I've hated about my schools library, and why I will likely never use it,
is that it's a huge pain in the ass to use their search systems.

That and the amazing existence of google's great search engine and I can not
only find information but google can likely take me to the exact page (Google
Books) that I need to read to get my information.

The user experience for someone is just not there to make it easy to use.

------
recursive
I got through my undergraduate without even trying to avoid doing research. It
never even came up. If wikipedia doesn't count, then I still don't have any
idea how you do research.

------
nxc18
I love that life is so easy for people these days that they need to find
things like the library to get anxious about.

A few hundred years ago and your worries would be related to your crop failing
or you know, something even remotely troubling in any way.

People need to take a step back, take a chill pill, and be grateful for the
immense privilege and resources they have rather than collapsing into balls of
anxiety all the time.

~~~
pessimizer
Tell that to somebody who fails at the library, fails at university, and fails
to find a job adequate to keep custody of their children.

What do you know about crops, anyway? Is that just some sort of rhetorical
device?

edit: also, the idea that it wasn't critical for people a few hundred years
ago to complete their education, whether it was in a library or in an
apprenticeship, is nonsense.

~~~
nxc18
I have a garden with 8 tomato plants and 8 pepper plants. The tomatoes have
been struggling to produce and the peppers failed. I distinctly remember
thinking to myself, ' I'm so glad I can walk to the store and feed myself
despite my failed crop.'

Its just so weird to me that people worry about the library. Its a building
full of information and people whose job it is to help you find that
information as quickly and painlessly as possible.

This feels like a general social anxiety issue (not being able to ask for
help) than an issue of libraries themselves being particularly scary.

Aside: I don't know what the deal with your first paragraph is. Its clearly an
emotional appeal and doesn't make any sense. No one 'fails' at the library.
The library is not going to make you fail university, whether or not you use
it. As for the custody issue, I have no comment other than there are many
steps between being bad afraid of the library and losing your children.

