ERIC Number: ED390413
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1995-Jul
Pages: 39
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
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The Research Needs of Historians in Russian and Slavic History; A Citation Analysis of "The Russian Review," 1991-1994.
Mahowald, Teresa Tickle
In an era of tight library budgets, librarians must carefully consider materials selection. The interdisciplinary nature of the social science and humanities fields makes determining what a researcher needs a difficult task. This study seeks to determine what materials are being used by scholars in the field of Russian and Slavic studies analyzing 4,657 citations in 4 recent volumes of "The Russian Review." One objective was to uncover what types of library materials are most important to researchers in Russian and Slavic history in regard to format of material, currency, and recency. The study found that: (1) 62.3% of citations pointed to primary sources and 25.1% of the primary source materials were government reports; (2) 58.8% of secondary source materials were monographs; (3) 91% of the primary sources were in the Russian language, while 61.8% of the secondary sources were in English; (4) 50.6% of all citations studied were published after 1980; and (5) the most cited journals were "The Russian Review" (9.2%), "Slavic Review" (8.3%), and "Istoriia SSSR" (6.4%). This study has shown the dual nature of the field of history in general: the types of secondary materials cited resemble trends in the field of humanities, but the currency and interdisciplinarity of the information used suggest a strong movement towards the needs of social scientists. Seven tables accompany the text, and the appendices contain the citation count worksheet and a list of journals cited in "The Russian Review." (Contains 15 references.) (Author/BEW)
Publication Type: Dissertations/Theses
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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