Lotka's Law and Library Science.

Abstract

n contributions is -i?-of those making one. Though Lotka's study was clearly limited to scientific productivity (his article was based on the chemistry and physics literature found in Chemical Abstracts and Auerbachs Geschichtstafeln der Physik ), a recent article based on a study of Technology and Culture concluded that Lotka's Law was applicable to that field within the humanities.2 As another tes of the general application of Lotka's Law, two library journals, Library Quarterly and College & Research Libraries (1963-1972), were selected for this study. All articles were tallied for each journal and this data is presented in Tables 1 and 2. As the tables indicate, there is a marked similarity between the results obtained from e ch journal. Instead of authors with two articles accounting for 25 percent of single author entries, they account for only 4.6 percent in each journal. In Library Quarterly , authors with three, four, and five contributions account for 3.1 percent, 1.0 percent, and .5 percent of single contributors, respectively. In College & Research Libraries , contributors with three, four, and five entries comprise only 1.0 percent, .5 percent, and .25 percent of authors with single articles, respectively. If Lotka's Law were valid for library science, the percentages should have approximated 11.1 percent, 6.2 percent, and 4.0 percent.

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