A Citation Analysis of Ecclesiastes Scholarship: A Test Case Using Citation Analysis in Biblical Studies

https://kent-islandora.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/asir/vol4/iss1/2/thumbnail.jpgTheological libraries have a long history in librarianship, but very little work has been done in trying to understand the nature of the materials that theological libraries collect. For example, within the social science subset of Journal Citation Reports, no journals were retrieved using the search terms “Bible,” or “biblical” and only one result was produced using the search term “theology.” As theological libraries (and libraries with large theology and religion collections) feel financial pressures to maintain a relevant and quality collection while justifying each and every purchase, a better understanding of the citation patterns within the broad fields of theology, church history, religion and biblical studies is needed. By doing so it is hoped that the gathered information would help librarians with collection development by giving librarians knowledge about what materials are actually being used by scholars. Thus, this study has examined a small sub-set of this biblical literature in order to better understand the citation patterns (if any) are evident in this literature.