I Hope that I am not Anxious About Using the Library: The Relationship Between Hope and Library Anxiety Among Graduate Students

Abstract

Library anxiety has been found to be a multidimensional phenomenon which can debilitate performance among graduate students. Yet, only recently has empirical research been undertaken in this area. However, it appears that library anxiety often occurs when goals are not met. Since hope is a cognitive set which consists of level of goal-directed determination (agency) and the propensity to plan ways to achieve goals (pathways), the purpose of this study was to investigate whether hope is related to library anxiety. Participants were 109 graduate students enrolled in several sections of an educational research course. A canonical correlation analysis indicated that students who have the poorest sense of successful determination in relation to their goals, and who have the least positive appraisals of their ability to generate ways to overcome goal-related obstacles and to reach their goals, tend to have the highest level of library anxiety associated with comfort with the library and knowledge of the library. Also, students with the poorest sense of successful goal-related determination tend to have the highest level of library anxiety associated with barriers with staff, affective barriers, comfort with the library, knowledge of the library, and mechanical barriers. Based on these findings, it is recommended that researchers investigate whether interventions aimed at agency and pathways help to reduce levels of library anxiety.