School of Communication & Information, Nanyang Technological University
Abstract
Practical and theoretical researches are equally important in the discipline of library and information science. For providing a better service to users, librarians need to continuously improve problem solving and decision making skills in their workplace. Significant improvement of library service could therefore be fulfilled by studies performed and published by librarians. Consequently, evaluations on research and publishing conducted by librarians could reveal how they contribute to individual career and to the whole field advancement. Contributions to the professional literature, in the perspective of publication patterns, productivity of librarian, article types, research methodologies employed, and research topics, through collaborative by Taiwan and China librarians in selected journals from 1998 to 2002 were examined in this research. Author characteristics, such as production of individual, institutional affiliation, and co-authorship were also statistical analyzed. Three major findings stand out from this study; first, percentage of Taiwan librarian author within the overall author population in selected journals was lower than that in China. Second, “Research” type of articles are surprisingly rare in China. And finally, collaborations between librarians or with other professions increased through the years but were not so popular in Taiwan until now. Based on these findings, this study suggests that librarians in Taiwan should constantly pursue working with fellow librarians or other professions, and for China, library and information education should improve training on methodology
