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".
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.
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).
This is exactly why I don't have an eBook reader. I don't do a lot of reading where an eBook reader would be handy, but I tend to keep a paper book handy, especially when traveling.
There's absolutely no restrictions on when I can use it (flying, jury duty), coupled with all the other reasons you give... really is the perfect solution for many use cases.
What I personally don't have is the desire to have lots of books around. I keep a handful handy, but try to get rid of ones that I won't re-read, lend, gift, or didn't have HUGE meaning to me.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
I never actually finished my project; life got in the way. However, I was learning about applications of pathfinding. My eventual goal was to define and implement an algorithm to find the best routes for a flight plan, taking into account time, fuel burn, etc.
Well, I finished my studies without borrowing a single (studying-related) thing from a library. We didn't have time to read whole books anyway, due to the way the curriculum is structured, and whatever textbook I needed to consult, I had available as a bootleg PDF on an FTP server we maintained for ourselves and those who'll come after us.
I went through years of undergrad without using the library once. It's really not much of a mystery how I did it. I bought a lot of books that were good, our Uni library gives us access to something like 100'000 books in PDF (well, I guess you could call that a 'visit' to the library) and the rest can be downloaded from the internet. Besides, lots of lectures had very good handouts and ain't nobody got time to read a lot of technical books.
We live in a society where almost everybody's first instinct when looking up facts is: "Google it". And the second: "Check Wikipedia". It really isn't astonishing that students have the same attitude when they first arrive, and I think it's the university's job to get them to change that habit. (Of course there will always be those too lazy to do anything but check Wikipedia, but most can be taught.)
Digitizing and indexing only solves part of the problem. The real problem is the lack of search skills, even among people who think they know how to search for things. There is also the knowledge that some databases are better for certain subjects because there isn't one "omni-database" that has a representative amount from all subject areas.
I can highly recommend "The Oxford Guide of Library Research" by Thomas Mann.
I had no idea how many different ways to research a library there are. Or how many of them are not available in my local university library, because the research interfaces have been dumbed down.
Mann is not a fan of the Internet and its reduction to a single search box.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
>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.
> Oh my goodness - it never occurred to me that a library could be scary
Me neither (probably doesn't help that I'm a trained librarian). I love walking into messy used bookstores too, where the books are piled precariously high and and stuff everywhere. I wonder if there's a 'used-book store anxiety'?
> "...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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Maybe the point is not that we get anxious about things in terms of their actual severity, we just get anxious period. Saying people should "take a "chill pill" might make you even more anxious, in fact, as they feel they are not really "supposed" to feel that way now.
Our basic psychology hasn't changed despite our abundance. We have thousands of years of accumulated anxiety, you can't just snap your fingers and tell your brain to "be grateful". Our worries, our anxieties are what defines humanity thats part of all of us.
A poor uneducated man in a remote village is suffering from the same anxieties as a billionaire in manhattan. Its common to all of humanity.
If it's expected of university students that they find their own way among the zillion books they could pick up, I think it's totally reasonable for them to feel anxiety. You invoke farming as an activity that it's legitimate to worry about, but consider the collective aspect of farming communities versus the individualistic norm of the modern university. There's a problem here, and it's not clever or helpful to tell people to just toughen up.
Personally I have never liked working in libraries though I do enjoy browsing the shelves. University libraries are a distracting environment if you are even slightly aware of the hectic activity and volume of material that's going on around you/stored on the shelves.
My future job prospects depend on my degree, and my degree depends on my research, and my research depends on navigating this library. If I don't figure it out it's going to mess up my future. No pressure. And if you read the article, it's more about a combination of being organized in a confusing way and being physically imposing. Many libraries are literally designed after temples. It's no surprise when buildings that try to be intimidating end up intimidating people.
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.
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.
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".