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Dissertation Information for Boyd Patterson Holmes

NAME:
- Boyd Patterson Holmes

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Library and Information Science

SCHOOL:
- University of Western Ontario (Canada) (2002)

ADVISORS:
- Michael J. Nelson
- Margaret Ann Wilkinson

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Timothy Courtenay Craven

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: The domain of information science, with an emphasis on contributing disciplines: 1973 to 1998

Abstract: An interdiscipline is an academic field that makes extensive use of information created by specific other disciplines. Information scientists commonly claim that their field operates as an interdiscipline. There is, however, only scant empirical proof for this assertion. What is more, the few such inquires into the alleged interdisciplinarity of the field often suffered from limitations in method. These problems included non-replicability of research findings, and the use of data sets that were poorly representative of the population studied.

Four questions guided this research: (1) is information science an interdiscipline? (2) what are the disciplines that contribute to information science? (3) have contributory disciplines remained constant in presence over time? and (4) have the extents of the contributions of the providing disciplines altered appreciably over time?

My method was a longitudinal citation analysis. I gathered a sample of citations taken, through Social SciSearch, from information-science research serial literature. Using OCLC CatME, Ulrich's online, and UTCat, I then plotted these citations against two universal classification systems--the Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress schemes. The specific years studied were 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988, 1993 and 1998. The method proved itself robust, with valid classification notations, from at least one of the two schemes, located for 95.33% (13,044/13,683) of the citations examined.

The resulting citation patterns proved that information science does function as an interdiscipline. Its principal contributors are library science, computer science, economics and management, its secondary contributors are engineering, sociology, education and psychology, and the more commonly-used of its marginal contributors are medicine, linguistics, mathematics and law. The identities of the principal and secondary contributors have not, however, remained constant over time. Only computer science, economics, engineering, library science, and, to a lesser extent, management, enjoyed significant levels of usage for the entire period under study.

Collectively, the principal and secondary contributors have enjoyed, in the past three decades, progressively more use by information scientists, while the marginal contributors have declined in this regard. From a disciplinary perspective, information science is thus evolving into a more cohesive entity than had previously been the case.

With certain of the disciplines, the extents of contribution have indeed shifted. The most compelling of these changes concerns library science, which declined in proportional usage, from the 1970s until at least the early-1990s. Nonetheless, library science is retaining its position as the principal provider to information science.

MPACT Scores for Boyd Patterson Holmes

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-01-31 06:26:55

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