Bibliometrics
Bibliometrics
The term bibliometrics was first coined by Prichard ( 25 ) in 1969 in preference to existing terminology ‘ statistical bibliography ’. The word “ Bibliometrics ” has two roots : ‘ biblio ’ and ‘ metrics . The term ‘ biblio ’ is derived from the combination of Latin and Greek word ‘ biblion ’ equivalent to Bylos , meaning book , paper which in turn was derived from the word Bylos , a city of Phenonicia , a noted city for export trade in paper . The word ‘ metrics ’, on the other hand , indicates the science of meter , i . e ., measurement and is derived either from Latin or Greek word ‘ metricus ’ or ‘ metricos ’ respectively , each managing measurement . This term was coined for the first time by Alan Pritchard . He used the term to describe all ' studies which seek to quantify the process of written communication '. Fairthorne ( 13 ) also defined it as ' the quantitative treatment of the properties of recorded discourse and behaviour pertaining to it .'
Bibliometric studies include studies of the growth of the literature in some subject , how much literature is contributed by various individuals , groups , or organisations or countries ; how much exists in various languages ; how the literature on some subject is scattered ( e . g ., over documentary types , language journals ); and how quickly the literature on some subject becomes out-of-date ( Studies of obsolescence ). Another important group of bibliometric studies relates to what sources author cite . Day-by-day this study is attaining sophistication and complexity , having national , international and inter disciplinary character . The backbone of Bibliometrics lies in its sound theoretical foundation most effectively laid by some pioneers like Lotka ( 20 ), Bradford ( 3 ), Zipf ( 39 ), Duck J de Sola Price ( 24 ), Bookstein ( 4 ), Mandelbrot ( 21 ), Brookes ( 5,6,7,8 ), Garifield ( 14,15 ), Egghe ( 12 ) and many others , and their techniques are capable of throwing light on various complicated problems faced by information scientists to quantify the process of written communication . The bibliometric tools can be applied to
1 . Studies related to scattering of articles 2 . Geographical distribution , language-wise distribution , institution-wise distribution of articles 3 . Age distribution of documents 4 . Distribution of citations -- subject , author , language , type , journal etc . 5 . Use of information storage and retrieval 6 . Application , in the Library Use Studies . 7 . To study the trends in research , and identifying the growth of literature . 8 . To identify authorship trends in documents on various subjects . 9 . to measure the utolity of library services 10 . To evaluate the library collection , etc ..
These definitions of librametry and bibliometrics show that librametry primarily aims at the quantitative analysis of the management of libraries and bibliometrics is limited to recorded knowledge . The publication in both the fields suggests that in librametry and