Exploring the use of libcitations as an altmetric with local public libraries

This short paper has drawn attention to a new source for libcitation analyses: libcitations from local public libraries. We have used a catalogue of local public libraries to calculate public libcitation scores for all books written by Flemish SSH scholars. An exploratory analysis of SSH books with a presence in local libraries has shown that non-scholarly SSH books are more likely to appear in local public libraries. It also shows that the books written by SSH scholars that appear in local public libraries are more likely to be written in Dutch. Rather than being indicators of scholarly impact, public libcitations are a tool that can be used specifically to gauge the impact of books that are not peer-reviewed and that are written in a local language. This study has shown that it is possible to perform libcitation studies with local public libraries. However, a few drawbacks have to be noted. Firstly, the analysis depends on a cataloguing system specific to the country or region under study rather than an international catalogue where all data can be retrieved in one go. Cross-country comparisons would have to take into account the differences between the public library catalogues and on a broader level also depend on the availability of data about local public libraries. The results with regard to libcitation scores have also shown that while the number of books written by local SSH scholars and present in public libraries is not negligible, it is also not very great. Thus, the public libcitation score can only be used for a limited number of books. Lastly, it is important to stress a few limitations of this study. Some important issues with libcitation analyses (that also apply to public libcitations) were raised by Biagetti and Biagetti, Iacono and Trombone. The libcitation scores as ‘citation scores by librarians’ suggests that librarians decide on the acquisition of individual books. In practice, however, books are often bought in bulk. Donations can also play a role. A second major issue is the prevalence of online books. As books become more and more available – and read – online, the interpretation of the libcitation score becomes more complex. The current study did not take into account the library acquisition policy. This could help in gaining an understanding into the extent to which bulk buying may influence the result, but also which books are seen as relevant to librarians. In future research, we will investigate these issues, in order to better assess the potential and limitations of (public) libcitation scores as an indicator of broader impact