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Investigation into the development and historical roots of collection development by referenced publication year spectroscopy

Basharat Ahmad Malik (Library and Information Science, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India)
Ashiya Ahmadi (Library and Information Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India)

Collection and Curation

ISSN: 2514-9326

Article publication date: 28 January 2020

Issue publication date: 22 September 2020

403

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is the application of a recently developed quantitative method named Referenced Publication Year Spectroscopy (RPYS) in the spectrum of Collection Development. RPYS portrays peak years to be recognized in citations in a research field that guarantees to assist in the identification of significant contributions and groundbreaking revelations in a research field.

Design/methodology/approach

Preliminary data of the study has been extracted from Web of Science (WoS) by using two phrases “collection development” and “collection building” to search in terms of the topic (comprising four parts: title, abstract, author keywords and KeyWords Plus). The search was restricted to the time period 1974-2017, which formulated a data set of 1,682 documents covering 29,017 cited references. The program CRExplorer (www.crexplorer.net) was used for the extraction of cited references from the data sets downloaded from WoS. Further analysis was performed manually using MS-Excel 2016.

Findings

The present study identified seminal works, which contributed to a high extent to the evolution and development of collection development. The analysis of all cited references using the RPYS method showed nine peaks, which present historical roots of collection development and revealed that the basic idea of this very subfield of library science dates centuries back. Moreover, the results of the investigation on most effective documents (in the form of peaks) revealed that the field of collection development significantly influenced by the works of authors such as Gabriel Naudé, Gabriel Peignot, Giulio Petzholdt, P L Gross, E M Gross, Richard Trueswell, Allen Kent, Ross Atkinson, etc.

Practical implications

The analysis of works cited in publications helps to ascertain important intellectual contributions related to a particular domain of knowledge. It not only helps in extracting the most important works but also it helps to reconstruct the history of a specific research field by examining the specific role of the cited references. Therefore, the results of the study could be useful for researchers, practitioners, scholars and more specifically bibliophiles, bibliographers and librarians to gain a better understanding of seminal works in the spectrum of collection development.

Originality/value

To the best of authors’ knowledge, the present research work is unique and novel in the spectrum of collection development, which explored and examined the pivotal works in the field by using the RPYS method.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The finding shows the way various academic scholars look over the concept of collection development. Besides this, the study showcases the value of this relatively new method, RPYS. Using this method, we have also uncovered a number of interesting aspects of collection development. Based on the historical background of collection development, it may be concluded that the concept was emerged before 16th century but gets popularity during 17th century. Thus, the results of this study might serve the scholars who are active in the field of the historical background of collection development.

Citation

Malik, B.A. and Ahmadi, A. (2020), "Investigation into the development and historical roots of collection development by referenced publication year spectroscopy", Collection and Curation, Vol. 39 No. 4, pp. 97-103. https://doi.org/10.1108/CC-08-2019-0024

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited

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