Library and Information Science Doctoral Research Appears to be Showing Less and Less Interest in Library Topics, and Concern among Practitioners May be Justified

R. Laval Hunsucker

摘要

Objective – To determine whether library and information science (LIS) doctoral research at North American institutions has, over the last eighty or so years, displayed a clear trend toward addressing topics other than those associated with librarianship and traditional library functions; and whether one can discern, in this regard, any significant differences among those institutions. Design – Conceptual content analysis of dissertation titles and abstracts. Setting – North American universities with American Library Association accredited LIS programs in the period 1930 through 2009. Subjects – The titles and, to the extent available, the abstracts of 3,230 LIS doctoral dissertations completed at these institutions during this period. Methods – Having opted for a directed, single-category type content analysis, the researchers began by pre-establishing a group of terms which they assumed could “represent the core curriculum of the master’s in library science”: terms which they surmised would therefore be able to function, where they appeared in “the records of doctoral output”, as good indicators that that output itself can rightly be judged to have had “an explicit focus on libraries/librarianship” (pp. 36, 44). The terms selected were: “librar*”, “catalog*”, “circulat*”, “collection develop*”, “collection manag*”, “school media”, and “reference” (where “*” indicates truncation, and that any term beginning with the respective letter string was acceptable). The researchers then simply tallied for each of the 3,230 dissertations under investigation how many times one or more of the pre-chosen terms occurred in its title and in its abstract, not recording which term or terms that occurred. (They do not make entirely clear to what extent data collection was computerized.) They subsequently analyzed the data longitudinally and by institution, with only one, nominal and dichotomous, variable for the title as well as for the abstract: whether or not any of the pre-chosen terms occurred at least once. Multiple occurrences, whether of the same term or of varying terms, played no role. Their analysis for the entire period of 1930 through 2009 was based on title data only, and did not take doctorate-granting institution into account. The separate analysis (N=2,305) for the period 1980 through 2009 excluded the thirty cases in which one or more of the terms occurred in the title but none of them occurred in the abstract. Main Results – One occurrence of any of the specified terms in the title was, for the overall period of 1930-2009, enough for any given dissertation to be qualified as having an explicit focus on libraries/librarianship. The percentage of such dissertations remained fairly stable from the 1930s through the 1980s, at between 56% and 62%, with the exception of an unexplained dip for the 1950s to 44.1%. Then, for the 1990s, the researchers discovered a fall-off from 57.9% to 36.0%, and in the following decade a further decrease, down to a level of 21.5%. During the separately-analyzed period 1980-2009, the percentage of dissertations with at least one of the specified terms in the title as well as in the diminished steadily from well over half (58.4%) for 1980-1984 to less than 1 in 5 (19.8%) for 2005-2009. A chi-square test revealed that the relationship between year of dissertation and term occurrence is statistically significant. By far the greatest decrease, of 15 percentage points, was that between the first half and the second half of the 1990s. Interestingly, during the whole thirty-year period, the percentage where a term appeared not in the title but only in the remained fairly constant, at around 20%, give or take about 2.5 percentage points. Yet when one looks at how many of the dissertations displayed none of the terms in the title and none in the abstract, one sees a continuous increase starting at 20.7% for 1980-1984 all the way up to 61.0% for 2005-2009, with the sharpest climb, of more than 17 percentage points, occurring around the mid-1990s. The distinction between the year 1980 and the year 2009 is even greater: from just over 1 in 7 (14.7%) to more than 3 out of 5 (62.2%). The analysis by institution revealed a statistically significant relationship for the period 1980-2009 between institution at which the dissertation was written and the occurrence of any of the terms at least once in both title and abstract. Certain institutions (most notably SUNY-Albany, Syracuse, Missouri, Hawaii, Montréal, and Long Island) showed a much higher than average overall level of no occurrence, and some (Michigan in particular, but also, for example, Florida State and the University of North Carolina) displayed a remarkably consistent decline in occurrence. Conclusion – The researchers conclude that their study, insofar as North America is concerned, “has provided empirical evidence for . . . the lessening focus in LIS dissertations on topics commonly associated with librarianship” and that it “suppo

机译：目的–确定在过去八十多年中，北美机构的图书馆和信息科学（LIS）博士研究是否显示出解决与图书馆管理和传统图书馆职能有关的主题以外的其他主题的明显趋势;在这方面，是否可以看出这些机构之间的任何重大差异。设计–学位论文标题和摘要的概念性内容分析。地点–在1930年至2009年期间，获得美国图书馆协会认可的北美大学认可了LIS计划。主题–在此期间，在这些机构中完成的3,230个LIS博士论文的标题和摘要。方法–研究人员选择了有针对性的单类别类型内容分析后，首先建立了一组术语，他们认为这些术语可以“代表图书馆学硕士课程的核心课程”：因此，他们认为这些术语将是能够发挥作用，它们出现在“博士论文记录”中，作为很好的指示，可以正确地判断该论文本身“明确关注图书馆/图书馆员”（第36、44页）。选择的术语为：“ librar *”，“ catalog *”，“ circulat *”，“ collection development *”，“ collection manag *”，“ school media”和“ reference”（其中“ *”表示截断，并且任何以相应字母开头的术语都是可以接受的）。然后，研究人员仅对被调查的3,230篇论文中的每篇进行统计，一个或多个预选术语在其标题和摘要中出现了多少次，而没有记录出现哪个或多个术语。（他们不完全清楚将数据收集计算机化的程度。）随后，他们按纵向和按机构对数据进行了分析，标题和摘要只有一个名义上和二分下的变量：是否预选条件至少出现一次。多次出现，无论是相同术语还是不同术语，都不起作用。他们对1930年至2009年整个时期的分析仅基于职称数据，没有考虑授予博士学位的机构。 1980年至2009年的单独分析（N = 2,305）不包括标题中出现一个或多个术语而摘要中没有一个术语的30个案例。主要结果–在1930-2009年的整个期间中，标题中任何指定术语的出现足以使任何给定的论文有资格专注于图书馆/图书馆学。从1930年代到1980年代，这类论文的百分比一直保持稳定，在56％至62％之间，但1950年代的原因不明原因是下降到44.1％。然后，在1990年代，研究人员发现从57.9％下降到36.0％，在随后的十年中进一步下降，下降到21.5％的水平。在分别进行分析的1980-2009年期间，标题中带有至少一个指定术语的学位论文的百分比以及从1980-1984年的一半以上（58.4％）稳步减少到不到五分之一（19.8％）for 2005-2009。卡方检验表明，论文年份与学期发生之间的关系具有统计学意义。迄今为止，最大的下降幅度是15个百分点，是1990年代上半年至下半年之间。有趣的是，在整个三十年的时间里，一个词出现在标题中而不是仅保持相当稳定的百分比大约为20％，大约是2.5个百分点。然而，当人们查看有多少篇论文的标题中没有显示术语，摘要中没有任何术语时，人们会看到连续的增长，从1980-1984年的20.7％一直上升到2005-2009年的61.0％，在1990年代中期左右发生了最急剧的攀升，超过了17个百分点。 1980年和2009年之间的差异更大：从七分之一（14.7％）到五分之三以上（62.2％）。按机构进行的分析显示，在1980年至2009年期间，撰写论文的机构与任何术语的标题和摘要中至少出现一次之间存在统计学上的显着关系。某些机构（最著名的是SUNY-Albany，锡拉丘兹，密苏里州，夏威夷，蒙特利尔和长岛）显示出比未发生事件的总体总体水平高得多，还有一些机构（尤其是密歇根州，例如佛罗里达州和北卡罗来纳大学）的出现率持续下降。结论–研究人员得出的结论是，就北美而言，他们的研究“为……提供了经验证据。。。 LIS学位论文对与图书馆管理通常相关的主题的关注减少了，并且“支持

Library and Information Science Doctoral Research Appears to be Showing Less and Less Interest in Library Topics, and Concern among Practitioners May be Justified

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