Library and information science literature: authorship and growth patterns

Abstract

The characteristics of library and information science litera ture were investigated by sampling issues of LISA, ISA, RZI. BS and CCA for the year 1983. Single author documents predominate with 69% of the total. English (71%) and Journals (71%) are the dominant language and format.

Currency has detenorated since earlier studies but literature coverage has increased. 1391 distinet journal titles were identi fied in the coverage of LISA, ISA, RZI and BS, but the overlap is very low with only 39 titles common to all four services. Most of the literature originated from North America (38%) and Western Europe (34%).

1545 journals were identified from Ulrich's Guides. The number of these 'surviving' journals exhibited exponential growth for the past 150 years. From this and other data the corpus of knowledge of library and information science is estimated as 5 x 10⁵ documents.

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