A Bibliometric Study of Scholarly LIS Literature Related to Collection Analysis or Collection Evaluation

1. A Bibliometric Study of Scholarly
LIS Literature Related to
Collection Analysis/Evaluation
Teresa S. Welsh, Ph.D.
teresa.welsh@usm.edu

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What is Collection Analysis/Evaluation?
Collection assessment or evaluation:
 Systematic evaluation of the quality of a library
collection to determine the extent to which it meets
the library's service goals and objectives and the
information needs of its clientele (ODLIS, 2014).
Analysis:
 Detailed examination of the elements or structure of
something (lexico.com, 2019).
 From Greek analusis, from analuein ‘unloose’ (ana-
‘up’ + luein ‘loosen’).

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Why is Collection Analysis Important?
 Collection analysis or evaluation is vital for
collection development and management
 Planning and building a useful and balanced
collection of library materials should be based
on ongoing assessment of information needs
of library's clientele, analysis of usage statistics,
and demographic projections (ODLIS, 2014).

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What are the types of collection analysis?
According to Crowley-Low (2002), there are two
basic types of collection analysis:
1. Materials-centered (such as determining how
many materials in a collection support a particular
curriculum).
2. User-centered (analysis of circulation rates of
library materials)

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What are the types of collection analysis?
Ciszek and Young (2010) sub-divides these two
categories into a quantitative and a qualitative:
1. User-centered quantitative assessment
2. User-centered qualitative assessment
3. Collection-centered quantitative assessment
4. Collection-centered qualitative assessment.

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User-Centered Quantitative Assessment
Circulation statistics, use statistics, ILL statistics,
quantitative user surveys
 ‘Management of Electronic Serials in Academic
Libraries: The Results of an Online Survey’
(Branscome, 2013)
 ‘Collection Development through Student Surveys
and Collection Analysis’ (Obert, 1988)

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User-Centered Qualitative Assessment
Interviews, focus groups, qualitative user surveys
 ‘Small Library Research: Using Qualitative and
User-Oriented Research to Transform a Traditional
Library into Information Commons’ (McCrary,
2017)
 ‘Is This a Chapter Book?: Parent-Involved
Categorization in a Kindergarten Classroom Book
Collection’ (Holstrom, 2019)

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Collection Quantitative Assessment
Comparison of one collection to another, or to a
checklist (Nisonger, 2007), or measurement of
collection growth over time
 ‘A Comparative Analysis of the Religious Non-
Fiction Collections of a Public Library and a
Christian Church Library’ (Bolton, 2014)
 ‘Assessing the High School Graphic Novel
Collections in Northeast Mississippi High Schools:
A Collection Analysis’ (Minor, 2016)

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Collection Qualitative Assessment
Examination of condition of a collection or content-
analysis of a collection
 ‘Condition Survey of the Circulating Collection:
Cook Library, University of Southern Mississippi’
(Reinke, 2013)
 ‘A Survey and Content Analysis of Army Manuals
Held by the National World War II Museum
Archives’ (Fallis, 2016)

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Problem Statement
 To what extent does the scholarly LIS literature
focus on the various types of collection analysis
or evaluation?
 This bibliometric study examines publication
pattern and content of scholarly LIS literature
related to collection analysis/evaluation:
publication trend, core journals, most prolific
authors, types of libraries, and methodology
that was the focus of the articles.

11. Research Questions
1. How many scholarly LIS articles per year have
been published on collection analysis?
2. In which journals were the articles published?
3. Who authored the articles in this study?
4. What types of libraries were the focus?
5. What methodologies were used for the analyses?
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12. Limitations and Assumptions
 This study is limited to peer-reviewed articles in
scholarly LIS databases available at USM
University Libraries
 It is assumed that the databases used in this study
are indexed accurately so that relevant articles are
retrieved with appropriate search strategy
 It is further assumed that articles retrieved in this
study are representative of scholarly LIS literature
related to collection analysis.
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13. Methodology
 Searched 3 LIS databases (LISTA, LISS, ISTA)
available through USM University Libraries
 Searched for ‘collection’ AND ‘analysis OR
evaluation OR assessment’ in title fields and in
subject fields
 Limited results to peer-reviewed journals,
academic journals, and English language
 Omitted false drops (non-relevant items).
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14. Search Results n=143 unique articles
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16
19
12
15
14
21
18
15
9
4
0
5
10
15
20
25
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
Number of Articles per Year

15. Core Journals
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Journal title Number of articles
Serials Librarian 19
Collection Management 16
SLIS Connecting 12
 47/143 articles (32.9%) published in 3 journals
 Supports Bradford’s Law - few core journals
publish 33% of articles on a particular topic.

16. Bradford’s Law of Scatter
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 Few core journals
publish 1/3 of
articles on a given
subject
 Moderate # publish
a further 1/3
 Larger # publish
remaining 1/3
 Useful tool for
collection
development.

17. Most Prolific Authors
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2
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5
de Groote
Wical
Author and Number of Articles
 Sandra L. de Groote co-authored two articles
 Stephanie Wical co-authored two articles
 Lotka’s Law - only few authors (15%) publish more
than once on a particular topic.

18. Article Focus: Types of Libraries
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109
9
6
7
7
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Academic
Archive/Spec Coll
Medical
National
School

19. Methodology Types
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7
40
12
8
44
10
22
0 10 20 30 40 50
User - qualitative
User - quantitative
User - qual/quant
Collection - qual
Collection - quant
Coll - qual/quant
Coll/User quant

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Some Questions for You…..
 What methodology type or combination do
you think is most useful?
 Why do you think the publication trend of
scholarly articles on collection analysis is
generally declining?

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Thank you for your attention
Questions?
Contact me at
teresa.welsh@usm.edu