By Terri Karlseng
Librarian, Preston Ridge Campus

As a Preston Ridge Campus librarian, I spend my days helping students find resources they need for various assignments and teaching library instruction classes.

In one of these classes, while demonstrating a sample search in one of our college databases, I came across a very interesting article, titled "I'll Go to the Library Tomorrow: The Role of Procrastination in Library Anxiety.” The article described a study conducted on 135 graduate students at a southeastern university.

The results showed students’ reasons for academic procrastination and were broken down into four categories: fear of failure, barriers with library staff, comfort with the library and knowledge of the library.

Academic procrastination, experienced by as many as 95 percent of college students, according to the article, obviously results in negative academic outcomes and avoidance behavior, caused by library anxiety, threatens students' ability to complete a task successfully. “Academic procrastination raises students’ anxiety and sinks their self-esteem,” according to Eric Hoover in an article published in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The point is, if this many students experience high levels of procrastination because of library anxiety, imagine the feelings of the students at Collin College. Many are just out of high school or returning students entering a library filled with constantly changing technologies -- online catalogs and databases, an ever burgeoning collection of ebooks, not to mention the Library of Congress Cataloging System. Many of these students believe everyone else is adept at using the library and are ashamed to ask for help.

It should come as no surprise that further studies show procrastination and library anxiety are major factors contributing to the rampant increase of plagiarism on college campuses today.

Today’s students only need do a quick Google search, enter a string of search terms and copy and paste the results into their papers. Having been raised on TV and the Internet they have the world of information at their fingertips. Most students think because they are good with computers they are good researchers. Unfortunately, library databases are not as user friendly as a search engine. This causes unnecessary frustration and in many cases a quick trip to Google or Wikipedia. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “Oh, my paper’s written…I just need to find some books to use in my works cited page.”

Collin College professors should schedule an instruction session for his or her classes. A library instruction session lets students know librarians are here to help them, which in turn makes them feel comfortable asking for help. Many students think everyone working in the library is a librarian. Librarians are required to have a master’s degree and most specialize in specific disciplines. We don’t claim to know everything but given a few minutes I guarantee we can find what you need.

Stop by the reference desk or schedule an instruction session online at www.ccccd.edu/cs/lrc/lrc.html, or call the Central Park library at 972.548.6869, the Preston Ridge Campus library at 972.377.1571 or the Spring Creek Campus library at 972.881.5985.