2013 Charleston Conference

At the 2012 Charleston Conference, University of Kansas (KU) librarians presented the results of a citation analysis project conducted using faculty publications in the sciences. During the subsequent year, KU librarians took the collection assessment project two steps further by gathering citation data from faculty publications in the humanities and social sciences to conduct an extensive citation analysis.

Using a random sampling of faculty publications from three departments in the humanities-philosophy, art history, and English, and three departments in the social sciences-psychology, political science, and economics, the presenters conducted a citation analysis of the resources cited in faculty journal publications. The librarians used this new data to compare the two broad disciplinary areas with the sciences, but even more importantly, they collected data that would influence collection development decisions in the individual subject areas.

The presenters tested their assumptions, expecting to find that science faculty use more journals than books and humanities faculty use more books than journals, but in some cases, the results were unexpected. KU librarians will share the analysis data for each department and discuss how they used the citation analysis to demonstrate the value of the library collections and inform collection development decisions.