I find it very hard to believe as well. I've always seen libraries as a place to relax and spend seemingly endless unstructured time browsing and reading guided only by curiosity.

I can imagine a slight amount of anxiety back when CARD CATALOGS were commonplace and one had to understand the indexing system (the dewey decimal system), scribble down the numbers onto slips of paper, hand them to a surly librarian and then wait and wait.

This is about college students who aren't there for unstructured reading. They have specific research goals they want to accomplish, and that's why they get anxiety when confronted with giant unfamiliar collections.

That doesn't change much, IMO. Sure, finding the exact book you need in a collection of several million can seem daunting, but after you've learnt the system, it takes about three minutes (most of which is walking time). And learning the system isn't hard either, at least in my library, it's a matter of minutes.

So as far as I can see, there is no real excuse except "I'm not used to books because they're not the Internet".

>Sure, finding the exact book you need in a collection of several million can seem daunting

They don't know the exact book they need. That's where things go south. Any idiot can type the title into most library search systems now. The problem students have is when you ask something that requires them to figure out which books they should look in themselves.

According to the article, there is often confusion about which building you're supposed to be in. So it's not always that easy.

> Oh my goodness - it never occurred to me that a library could be scary

Me neither (probably doesn't help that I'm a trained librarian). I love walking into messy used bookstores too, where the books are piled precariously high and and stuff everywhere. I wonder if there's a 'used-book store anxiety'?