Literature of Computerised Library and Information Services: A Bibliometric Study

Abstract

A database consisting of 25,669 items was analysed to study the growth of literature and subjectwise growth, while a database of 15287 items was analysed to study authorship trend, author's publishing outlets, journal literature, its distribution and application of Bradford's Law. Growth of literature was found in two stages: Maximum literature is covered in the area of computerised information storage and retrieval, cataloguing, information services, etc. Financial management, and classification, are the evolving subjects and computerised citation indexes, printed catalogues, etc. seem to be decaying. Works were found to be eontrihuted in a highly individual manner at the initial stage (8R.44%) while at the stage of maturity the tendency of increasing co-openion and team work is becoming popular. Lotka's law in its original form as inverse square law does not apply to this set of data. but however, it docs apply in its generalised form with a calculated value of exponent α=4.65. The K-S test as carried out applied to test the applicability of generalised form of Lotka's law. The difference in estimated and observed values have been found to be highly insignificant. The data under study docs not exactly fit the Bradford's law of scattering.