Bibliometrics
Bibliometrics
The term bibliometrics was first coined by Prichard( 25) in 1969 in preference to existing terminology‘ statistical bibliography’. The word“ Bibliometrics” has two roots:‘ biblio’ and‘ metrics. The term‘ biblio’ is derived from the combination of Latin and Greek word‘ biblion’ equivalent to Bylos, meaning book, paper which in turn was derived from the word Bylos, a city of Phenonicia, a noted city for export trade in paper. The word‘ metrics’, on the other hand, indicates the science of meter, i. e., measurement and is derived either from Latin or Greek word‘ metricus’ or‘ metricos’ respectively, each managing measurement. This term was coined for the first time by Alan Pritchard. He used the term to describe all ' studies which seek to quantify the process of written communication '. Fairthorne( 13) also defined it as ' the quantitative treatment of the properties of recorded discourse and behaviour pertaining to it.'
Bibliometric studies include studies of the growth of the literature in some subject, how much literature is contributed by various individuals, groups, or organisations or countries; how much exists in various languages; how the literature on some subject is scattered( e. g., over documentary types, language journals); and how quickly the literature on some subject becomes out-of-date( Studies of obsolescence). Another important group of bibliometric studies relates to what sources author cite. Day-by-day this study is attaining sophistication and complexity, having national, international and inter disciplinary character. The backbone of Bibliometrics lies in its sound theoretical foundation most effectively laid by some pioneers like Lotka( 20), Bradford( 3), Zipf( 39), Duck J de Sola Price( 24), Bookstein( 4), Mandelbrot( 21), Brookes( 5,6,7,8), Garifield( 14,15), Egghe( 12) and many others, and their techniques are capable of throwing light on various complicated problems faced by information scientists to quantify the process of written communication. The bibliometric tools can be applied to
1. Studies related to scattering of articles 2. Geographical distribution, language-wise distribution, institution-wise distribution of articles 3. Age distribution of documents 4. Distribution of citations-- subject, author, language, type, journal etc. 5. Use of information storage and retrieval 6. Application, in the Library Use Studies. 7. To study the trends in research, and identifying the growth of literature. 8. To identify authorship trends in documents on various subjects. 9. to measure the utolity of library services 10. To evaluate the library collection, etc..
These definitions of librametry and bibliometrics show that librametry primarily aims at the quantitative analysis of the management of libraries and bibliometrics is limited to recorded knowledge. The publication in both the fields suggests that in librametry and