Social Interdependence and Library Anxiety
August 12th, 2004I started Library Anxiety a few days ago (I’m reviewing it for Public Libraries Magazine). This quote seemed related to my recent posts on group work and collaborative efforts in the library setting:
“…cooperative attitudes were related significantly to barriers with staff, comfort with the library, and knowledge of the library. Specificially, students who had the greatest cooperatove orientation tended to have the lowest levels of library anxiety…[i]ndividualistic attitudes, affective barriers, and mechanical barriers served as suppressor variables” (p 44)
While this needs to be read in the context of the entire chapter (as these phrases are defined therein), the concept that those that don’t work cooperatively (or have “individualistic attitudes”) have higher levels of library anxiety is very pertinent for those that focus on collaborative/group work. Think about your experiences working with patrons. Are those that ask reference questions as a group (this is more likely to happen in a public and/or academic library setting) more or less anxious about their research experience? Do they feed off each others anxieties or is there a calming effect present? These are interesting questions that could be studied in the future.