IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jamest/v25y1974i3p172-182.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Densities of use, and absence of obsolescence, in physics journals at M I T

Author

Listed:
  • Alexander Sandison

Abstract

Chen's data for the raw frequency of use of 138 physics journals in the science library at M I T are re‐examined and converted to densities of use‐per‐metre of shelf. Other units of size for obtaining densities, and their measurement, are discussed. There is no evidence for synchronous obsolescence in the 1955 to 1968 volumes of these journals: instead there is some statistically significant evidence of greater density of use with greater age. Similar evidence elsewhere is cited. The ranking order for heaviness of use is also radically altered by converting raw frequencies to densities of use. It is suggested that, for comparing the relative values of different journals, or age groups, in library use or citation studies, analyses of raw frequencies are valueless, and indeed potentially dangerously misleading, until they are converted to allow for the numbers of available items in each group examined.

Suggested Citation

  • Alexander Sandison, 1974. "Densities of use, and absence of obsolescence, in physics journals at M I T," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 25(3), pages 172-182, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamest:v:25:y:1974:i:3:p:172-182
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.4630250308
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.4630250308
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/asi.4630250308?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yanhui Song & Feng Ma & Siluo Yang, 2015. "Comparative study on the obsolescence of humanities and social sciences in China: under the new situation of web," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(1), pages 365-388, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jamest:v:25:y:1974:i:3:p:172-182. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.asis.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.