Information Anxiety and African-American Students in a Graduate Education Program
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26443/el.v35i1-2.313Abstract
Library anxiety has been cited as one factor affecting academic performance, but library use is only part of obtaining information for academic needs. This paper expands the concept of library anxiety to information anxiety by an examination of the information behavior of black graduate students when using a variety of information resources, including electronic and human. Findings indicate that information anxiety is a continuous element of minority students’ information behavior and creates a barrier to obtaining and using information for academic work.References
Aronson, J., Lustina, M. J., Good, C., Keough, K., Steele, C. M., & Brown, J. (1999). When white men can’t do math: Necessary and sufficient factors in stereotype threat. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 35, 29-46.
Council of Graduate Schools. (2008). Ph.D. completion and attrition: Analysis of baseline demographic data from the Ph.D. Completion Project. Retrieved from http://www.phdcompletion.org/information/Executive_Summary_Demographics_Book_II.pdf
Gonzales, P. M., Blanton, H., & Williams, K. J. (2002). The effects of stereotype threat and double-minority status on the test performance of Latino women. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 659-670.
Good, C., Aronson, J., & Harder, J. A. (2008). Problems in the pipeline: Stereotype threat and women’s achievement in high-level math courses. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 29, 17-28.
Jiao, Q., & Onwuegbuzie, A. (1997). Antecedents of library anxiety, Library Quarterly, 67(4), 372-389.
Jiao, Q., & Onwuegbuzie, A. (1998). Perfectionism and library anxiety among graduate students. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 24(5), 365-371. doi: 10.1016/S0099-1333(98)90073-8
Katopol, P. (2007). “Just Enough” information: Information behaviour, organizational culture, and decision making in municipal government. Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science-Revue Canadienne Des Sciences De L Information Et De Bibliotheconomie, 31(3-4), 233-247.
Katopol, P. (2005). Library anxiety. In K. Fisher, S. Erdelez & L. Mckechnie (Eds.), Theories of information behavior (pp. 235-238). Medford, NJ: Information Today.
Katopol, P. (2002). Library anxiety and black graduate students in majority institutions: A complex problem in multiple contexts. Unpublished manuscript.
Mellon, C. (1986). Library anxiety: A grounded theory and its development. College & Research Libraries, 47, 160-165.
Murphy, M., Steele, C., & Gross, J. (2007). Signaling threat: How situational cues affect women in math, science, and engineering settings. Psychological Science, 18, 879-885.
Onwuegbuzie, A. and Jiao, Q. (2000). I'll go to the library later: The relationship between academic procrastination and library anxiety. College & Research Libraries, 61(1), 45-54.
Pettigrew, K., Fidel, R., & Bruce, H. (2001). Conceptual frameworks in information behavior. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 35, 43-78.
Rasmussen, J., Pejtersen, A. M., & Goodstein, L.P. (1994). Cognitive systems engineering. New York: Wiley.
Steele, C. (1999, August). Thin ice: Stereotype threat and black college students. The Atlantic Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/99aug/9908stereotype.htm
U.S. Census Bureau. (2011). 2010 Census shows America's diversity. Retrieved from http://2010.census.gov/news/releases/operations/cb11-cn125.html
U.S. Census Bureau. (2009). United States Population Projections. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/analytical-document09.pdf
U.S. Census Bureau. (2008). An older and more diverse nation by midcentury. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/population/cb08-123.html
Vicente, K. (1999). Cognitive work analysis. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Everything we publish is freely available. In the spirit of encouraging free open access journals, Education Libraries applies the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) to all works we publish (read the summary or the full license legal code ). • Authors retain copyright and grant Education Libraries right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. • Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal. Under the CCAL, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their article, but authors allow anyone to read, download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy articles in Education Libraries, so long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publishers. In most cases, appropriate attribution can be provided by citing the original article in Education Libraries. For any reuse or distribution of a work, you must also make clear the license terms under which the work was published. This broad license was developed to facilitate open access to, and free use of, original works of all types. Applying this standard license ensures your right to make your work freely and openly available. By submitting a manuscript for review, author(s) acknowledge first publication rights are granted to Education Libraries. Submission of a manuscript implies that the work described has not been published; that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere; and that its publication has been approved by all coauthors and the responsible authorities at the institute where the work was conducted. As publisher, we are providing a process for your intellectual property to be reviewed by and distributed to your peers. It is the author’s responsibility to obtain all necessary permissions for the inclusion of copyrighted materials, such as figures and tables from other publications, and to pay any and all necessary fees. Appropriate credit should be shown in the body of the work. Previously published work will not be considered for publication; we do not accept any simultaneous submissions. Education Libraries will, however, accept manuscripts based on presentations made at conferences sponsored by the Special Library Association, at the discretion of the co-editors.