The Academic Librarian as Instructor: A Study of Teacher Anxiety

Academic librarians have increasingly active teaching roles, particularly with the advent and expansion of information literacy in library and information science, and higher education. For many librarians, this expanded teaching role causes varying degrees of anxiety. Yet, teacher anxiety studies typically include classroom teachers only. This exclusion may be due to external perceptions of librarianship that often do not view librarians as teachers. Librarians' perceptions of themselves can heighten this exclusion, with librarians identifying with stereotypes or eschewing teaching duties altogether. This study aims to determine whether identified causes and symptoms of teacher anxiety are consistent within academic librarianship, and whether internal or external perceptions of librarianship have any effect on occurrences of teacher anxiety. (C) 2007 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.