statistical bibliography or bibliometrics

7/30/2019 Statistical Bibliography or Bibliometrics

1/3

STATISTICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OR BIBLIOMETRICS?

The termstatistical bibliography seems to have been first used by E. Wyndham Hulme in1922 when he delivered two lectures as the Sandars Reader in Bibliography at theUniversity of Cambridge. Subsequently the lectures were published as a book.1

Although the debt has never been explicitly recognized by means of citations, Hulmeanticipated modern work on the history of science. He used the term to mean theillumination of the processes of science and technology by means of countingdocuments. Hulme both summarized the results of Cole and Eales2 and producedoriginal work on the growth of UK patents (relating these to social processes in the UK)and on the changes displayed in the International Catalogue of Scientific Literature (relatingchanges in subject and country production of literature to internationaldevelopments).

The term then seems to have been ignored for twenty-two years until Gosnellused it in a paper on obsolescence of literature3 without acknowledging its previous

use. Presumably the term was used in the original thesis4

but I cannot say whether hecited Hulme there.

The next use of the term was in 1962 by Raisig in a critical essay on citationstudies5. Since that time the term does not seem to have been used except by thepresent writer.6

The definition and purpose of statistical bibliography has been variously statedas:

1. to shed light on the processes of written communication and of the nature andcourse of development of a discipline (in so far as this is displayed through

written communication), by means of counting and analysing the various facetsof written communication7 (a slightly different version appears in Pritchard6);

2. the assembling and interpretation of statistics relating to books and periodicals to demonstrate historical movements, to determine the national or universalresearch use of books and journals, and to ascertain in many local situations thegeneral use of books and journals.5

In their own way these statements of the definition and use of statisticalbibliography are adequate and in particular the second describes well the mainuses to which the statistics (usually collected by means of citation studies,

abstracts journal counts, or usage studies) have been put.

The present writer has never found the termsstatistical bibliography at allsatisfactory, and, to judge from discussions with many other workers in thefield, this feeling is fairly general. A measure of the unsatisfactory nature of theterm is the fact that it has been used only four times in forty-sex years. Theterm is clumsy, not very descriptive, and can be confused with statistics itself orbibliographies on statistics. This latter point was made by M. G. Kendall upon


2/3

receiving a copy of my paper6 and he suggested that the name of the subject bechanged. This provided the final impetus for this paper.

Therefore it is suggested that a better name for this subject (aspreviously defined) is BIBLIOMETRICS, i.e. the application of mathematics and

statistical methods to books and other media of communication. An intensivesearch of the literature has failed to reveal any previous use of this term and anapproach to the OED again failed to find that the term has been used before.

The beauty of this term is that, whilst this particular combination is aneologism and therefore to be treated with a certain amount of suspicion, it hasvery close links to the accepted, and analogous biometrics, econometrics, andscientometrics. The latter term is a Russian one for the application ofquantitative methods to the history of science8 and obviously overlaps withbibliometrics to a considerable extent. En passant, it is greatly to be regrettedthat the very logical Russian term for studies of all types on the processes of

science scientology has such unfortunate connotations in the West.

In conclusion it is to be hoped that this term BIBLIOMETRICS will be usedexplicitly in all studies which seek to quantify the processes of writtencommunication and will quickly gain acceptance in the field of informationscience.

ALAN PRITCHARDNorth-Western Polytechnic, London

Now at National Computing Centre, Manchester

REFERENCES

1. HULME, E. W. Statistical bibliography in relation to the growth of moderncivilization. London, 1923.

2. COLE, F. J. and EALES, N. B. The history of comparative anatomy. PartIA statistical analysis of the literature. Science Progress 11(44), April1917, p. 57896.

3. GOSNELL, C. F. Obsolescence of books in college libraries. Coll. Res.Libs. 5(2), March 1944, p. 11525.

4. GOSNELL, C. F. The rate of obsolescence in college library bookcollections as determined by an analysis of three select lists of books

for college libraries. PhD thesis. New York University. Sept. 1943.5. RAISIG, L. M. Statistical bibliography in the health sciences. Bull. Med.Lib. Assoc., 50(3), July 1962, p. 45061.

6. PRITCHARD, A. Statistical bibliography; an interim bibliography. North-Western Polytechnic, School of Librarianship. May 1969, 60p. (SABS-5; PB 184 244).

7. PRITCHARD, A. Computers, statistical bibliography and abstractingservices. 1968 (unpublished).


3/3

8. DOBROV, G. M. and KORENNOI, A. A. The informational basis ofscientometrics, In A. I. MIKHAILOV et al eds. On theoretical problems ofinformatics. Moscow VINITI for FID, 1969, p. 16591. (FID 435).

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: Journal of Documentation 25(4) Dec 1969, 348349.

statistical bibliography or bibliometrics

Documents