Using The Physical Academic Library to Cope with Academic Stress

Abstract

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, academic stress was a constant and prevalent problem for college students around the world. Colleges and universities, and their academic libraries, have developed various interventions to assist students in their stress management. Research has investigated how students manage academic stress on their own. Yet there has been little research into how students use libraries as a mechanism to manage their academic stress. This qualitative study uses a grounded theory approach to evaluate students’ use of the library’s physical space (the physical library) to cope with their academic stress. Data was collected through a series of focus groups conducted in the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. This study found three categories of students’ use of the physical library. All three can be seen to represent mechanisms for coping with stress, indicating that student use of the library is, by itself, a strategy used by students to cope with their academic stress.