Institutional Affiliations of Authors of Research Articles

Abstract

Professional affiliations of authors of articles in library and information science are reported, based on a random sample of articles indexed in Social Science Citation Index. Faculty members at schools of library and information science - less than one percent of the professional community - authored over 23 percent of the articles. Academic librarians authored nearly one-third of the literature. THE NEED for a body of theory and proven techniques, based upon careful research, on which practice in librarianship and information service can be founded long has been recognized among library scientists. Responsibility for the conduct of that research has been assumed to belong to the faculties of graduate schools of librarianship and information science.1 The American belief that research is the proper province of graduate faculties was already well established in other disciplines when the first doctoral program in librarianship was created, at the University of Chicago, and that assumption was one of the arguments advanced in favor of the institution of that program. In the 1950s and 1960s, research in many fields began to move out of the universities and into private corporations and research entrepreneurship. There are indications that library science may be witnessing the same phenomenon; firms like Cuadra Associates, King Research, and James Rush and Associates, created and staffed by professional lilbrarians and former academics, have undertaken research for