The development of gender studies within LIS : a bibliometric study of undergraduate dissertations with a gender perspective

The main purpose of this two year master´s thesis is to study patterns, structures and relations within gender studies when combined with Library and Information Science(LIS). Further aims are to determine the character of student work considering, occurrence, gender and main theme, to study the progress of the intellectual base of gender studies within LIS and to evaluate the use of bibliometrics as a tool for researching the development of a discipline. To achieve these aims, a bibliometric study using both publication analysis and citation analysis, is carried out. The studied material contains student work, specifically focused on gender, from the Swedish School of Library and Information Science (SSLIS) from 1985–2012. The results show an increasing interest in gender issues among the students and furthermore they show an interesting development of gender related themes in student work. Where students during the early years focused on female themes, the more recent years present a wider range of subjects such as gender equality, masculinity, LGBT and queer issues. The citation analysis indicates an increased interdisciplinarity within the intellectual base from 1996–2011. This is a consequence of an enhanced theoretical approach in studentwork, which leads to an increase in imported theories and methods from other disciplines. The citation analysis also reveals that the twenty most cited authors in the later years are all scholars. This is, however, not the case among the most cited authors of the earlier years where journalists and public debaters are represented. These findings correlate with Frickel and Gross’ theory of Intellectual/Scientific Movements. This study also serves as an example of how bibliometrics can be useful in examining a discipline’s structure and developmen