Quality assessment of library and information science school faculties

Abstract

Citations are examined as an index of the quality of library and information science school faculties. Using the citations of the faculties at those schools appearing on White's 1986 list of schools perceived to be “best”, a comparison is made between total citation count per school and total citation count per school normalized by total numbers of faculty. Citations of the faculties of ten randomly selected library and information science schools are examined in the same manner. The author's own school is included for comparison. The data for all the schools examined tend to show that measuring productivity by citation does not correlate with perceived quality. For each school there tends to be one or two individuals who are the major producer of articles which in turn draw the largest number of citations. Questions are raised about productivity as a measure of quality and about the need for schools to be located within research institutions.