Citation analysis for collection development: A comparative study of eight humanities fields

Abstract

This study analyzes 9,131 citations from the 2002 volumes of journals in eight humanities fields: art, classics, history, linguistics, literature, music, philosophy, and religion. This study found that citation patterns varied widely among humanities disciplines. Due to these differences, it is important for librarians with humanities collection development responsibilities to consider each field separately when making collection development decisions. The authors investigated the language of sources cited in each field. Foreign language citations continue to be dominated by French and German. This study also confirms that, in most humanities disciplines, monographs remain the dominant format of cited sources, although some fields cited monographs less frequently than expected. © 2005 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.