Over the full span of fifty years there were 1,182 articles, 186 literature surveys, and 197 papers published in LRTS. For the first two decades, the average number of articles and papers per issue was 36 and 31 respectively. By the fourth and fifth decades, the average had dropped to 25 and 20 respectively.

Columns (excluding columns for book reviews, which are counted separately) have never been a big part of LRTS. Only five regular columns have been identified, and all appear for short periods of time during the first thirty-five years. During the first decade, two columns appeared briefly: Marian Sanner’s column “Studies and Surveys in Progress” appeared in eight issues between 1959 and 1961, and Hubbard Ballou wrote a column, “Copying Method Notes,” that appeared for three issues in 1964. “ERIC/CLIS (Education Resources Information Center Clearing House on Library and Information Science) Abstracts” appeared in four issues during 1973 and 1974. The most recent column to appear was the column by Verna Urbanski titled “Resources and Technical Services News,” which ran for seven issues in 1988 and 1989. This column addressed a broad range of topics, including “CD-ROMs Take Center Stage,” “The Library As Publisher,” and “New Developments in the Preservation World.” The longest-running column was the news from the Council of Regional Groups, which ran for fourteen years (1957–1970).

Reviews have appeared in 167 of the 200 issues of LRTS. In the first ten to fifteen years, reviews included individual article, equipment and processes, and vendor and services reviews as well as the annual literature surveys and book reviews. An example of an early equipment and processes review is Peter Scott’s 1959 review, “The Miraculous Bubble: A Look at Kalfax Microfilm.” In the early years, there also were review articles comparing books, equipment, or vendors. An example is Samuel T. Walter’s 1958 evaluation, “The Red and the Green,” which reviewed two 1949 cataloging codes, ALA Rules for Author and Title Entry (red book) and LC Rules for Description (green book). The data in table 1 show the types of reviews that have appeared. The numbers represent the number of issues having a particular type of review. The first decade is the only decade that book reviews appeared in every issue. Twelve issues in the first decade had reviews for individual articles. This service was unique to the first editor of LRTS, Esther J. Piercy. From time to time, she wrote a column, “Editor Recommends,” in which she reviewed an article or articles from other journals that she judged worthy of further discussion.

The presence of editorials is an indicator of an editor’s style. The early editors wrote few editorials. Esther Piercy wrote only five during her eleven years of tenure as editor of LRTS. Together Paul S. Duncan, Robert Wedgeworth, and Wesley Simonton wrote eight editorials during their combined eleven-year tenure (volumes 12–23, number 3). The last three decades have shown an increase in editorials (twelve, seventeen, and eighteen respectively), but in no decade do editorials appear in even 50 percent of the issues.

Using the number of issues containing letters to the editor as the measure, LRTS has been a vibrant journal over the years. In all but the last decade, more than 50 percent of the issues have contained letters to the editor. The second decade shows the most active readership, with 39 of the 40 issues (97.5 percent) containing letters to the editor. Twenty-one issues (52.5 percent) had letters to the editor during the first decade. The third and fourth decade had reader letters in 25 (62.5 percent) and 26 (65 percent) issues, respectively. The fifth decade had the fewest instances of reader letters, with only 10 (25 percent) issues containing letters to the editor.

Announcements and reports were numerous in the earlier years of LRTS before the RTSD Newsletter was created in 1976 to cover division news. The 1989 change in policy to make LRTS less of an organ of the institution and more of a scholarly journal is reflected in the makeup of the contents. Ninety-three percent (440 of 474) of all the announcements and 86 percent (287 of 332) of all the reports that have been published in LRTS were published in the first three decades prior to the policy change.

The number of necrologies has been fairly consistent, with approximately ten appearing every decade. Again, the fewest number (four) appeared in the last decade. Whether this is a result of editorial policy or a drop in the number of “notable” deaths has not been determined!

As previously described, documents were assigned one or more top-level topical subject headings matching the names of ALCTS sections, committees, or interest groups, or, if appropriate, one or more broader headings—or both (see figure 1). In addition, subheadings reflecting a particular perspective (for example, administration and management, costs, standards, or use), type of library, or type of resource were assigned as appropriate (see figure 2). Topical subject headings were assigned primarily to articles, literature surveys, and papers. Subject headings were assigned to announcements and reports only if the documents were not focused on the administrative concerns of RTSD or ALCTS. For example, “Preservation/Reformatting—Standards” was assigned to a 1974 ANSI Subcommittee 35 report on the Draft Standard for the Advertising of Micropublications, but no heading was assigned to the Reproduction of Library Materials Section report that appeared the same year. Letters to the editor addressing issues raised in a particular article were assigned the same subject headings(s) as the article. Other types of documents, such as announcements of grants received, editorials, most letters to the editor, necrologies, and book review sections covering books on a variety of topics, were not assigned subject headings.

Overall, there were 2,024 subject heading strings assigned to 1,785 documents. The data in table 2 show that in the cases of subject headings assignment, a little more than half (1046 or 51.7 percent) of the topical content of LRTS has been about cataloging and classification. This is a little less than the 54.8 percent reported by Smiraglia and Leazer’s analysis of thirty-five years of LRTS.¹⁹ The subject headings matching the other four sections of ALCTS represent only a total of 36.8 percent (744 of 2024) of the content of the 1,785 documents. The three broad subject headings were assigned 11.6 percent (234) of the time.

Because of the size and complexity of the administrative structure of the Cataloging and Classification Section, the subject headings also were complex. The breakdown of the cataloging and classification literature is presented separately in table 3. Note that this table does not have all the subheadings representing section committees and interest groups, specific topics, and perspectives shown in figure 1 and 2. In table 3 a subject heading is shown with subheadings if the number of documents assigned to the top-level heading was large enough that further breakdown seemed beneficial to understanding the data.

“Classification” and “Description and Access” were the most frequent cataloging and classification topics addressed, together accounting for 43.9 percent (459 of 1,046) of all the articles on cataloging. Most of the articles discussing classification concentrated on the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) and the Library of Congress Classification System (LCCS), but there also were articles on the Bliss, Colon (Ranganathan), Expansive (Cutter), International (Rider), and Universal Decimal (UDC) classifications. A pervasive subtopic of description and access is description and access of specific types of materials, such as archival materials, court materials, e-resources, non-English language materials, nonbook materials, scores, screenplays, and serials. During the development of AACR and AACR2 (roughly the first three decades of LRTS), many of the articles that focused on description and access dealt with codes and code revision. Theoretical, practical, and political aspects of the new codes were discussed.

Similarly, catalogs have been a frequent topic during the first three decades of LRTS. Book catalogs have received the most press, but other forms, such as Computer Output Microform (COM) and card and online catalogs, have been discussed. Not unlike today’s discussions on screen design, librarians wrestled with issues of data arrangement in the analog world. There are articles proposing, evaluating, and testifying for dictionary, divided, and classified catalog arrangements.

Returning to table 2, nearly half of the documents about collections (117 of 241, or 48.5 percent) focused on collection development. Of these, about a third (41 of 117) focused on the administration of collection development. Collecting specific types of materials accounted for 23.1 percent (27 of 117) of collections articles. Specific types of materials addressed included adult fiction, business resources, folk songs, Internet resources, Near Eastern resources, and audio-visual.

Other collections topics included issues related to the use and management of the collections themselves. Management topics, including budgeting, cooperative programs, evaluation, and technology, accounted for nearly a third (30.2 percent or 73 of 241) of all collections topics. The management of specific types of collections (for example, art collections, music libraries, and children’s collections) made up 11.6 percent (28 of 241) of the collections documents. Collection use, circulation, and interlibrary loan accounted for 9.5 percent (23 of 241) of the collections documents.

Many of the acquisitions documents (83 of 198 or 41.9 percent) have dealt with the challenges of acquiring foreign materials and nonbook formats. Documents discussed acquiring materials from Canada, East Germany, Mexico, Nigeria, and Russia. Exchange programs as a means of obtaining hard-to-acquire materials were an important topic of the early decades of articles on acquisition. Documents addressing the issues of obtaining formats included art, ephemera, government documents, musical scores, software, and technical reports. Other acquisitions topics included vendor evaluation and general administration and management topics.

The focus of preservation and reformatting topics primarily was analog reformatting; specifically, microforms. These documents accounted for 54.1 percent (93 of 172) of all the documents on preservation and reformatting. General topics, such as administration, cooperative programs, and education for preservation and reformatting professionals, accounted for another 36.1 percent (62 of 172). Other topics have included binding and the treatment of materials for preservation.

Over the years, there have been 133 documents on serials. The greatest discussion of serials appeared in the first decade, with nearly 34 percent (45 of 133 articles) on this topic. Forty-two (31.6 percent) of serials articles appeared in the fourth decade (volumes 31–40). In the both of these decades, the emphasis of serials documents was on administration and management, particularly issues dealing with technology. An example of an early serials technology article is a 1966 article by William McGrath titled “A Simple, Mechanized, Non-Computerized System for Serials Control in Small Academic Libraries: A Primer.” The more sophisticated technology of the fourth decade is shown in the 1990 article “Serials, Links, and Technology: An Overview” by Tom Delsey.

Figure 3 shows the proportion of each of the five ALCTS section topics and three broad subjects (combined and treated as one) for each of the five decades. Cataloging and classification has always been the most prevalent topic, averaging 52 percent of the content. During the first three decades, 60 percent or more of the content was cataloging and classification. In the last two decades, however, cataloging content has dropped to around 50 percent. In contrast, the percentage of content addressing collections issues is increasing. During the first two decades, collection topics made up 7 percent (34 of 459) and 8 percent (33 of 433), respectively, of LRTS. During the third and fourth decades, collections topics made up 17 percent of LRTS. By the last decade, collections made up 26 percent (65 of 252) of LRTS.

The largest proportion of acquisitions topics occurred during the second and third decades, with 14 percent (64 of 459) and 15 percent (64 of 433), respectively. The second decade (1967–1976) was a time of relative prosperity in libraries; librarians were looking for ways to build collections. The third decade (1977–1986) was a time of extensive automation development; many of the articles dealt with requirements and shared experiences for automating acquisitions.

Preservation reached a high of 15 percent (47 of 315) during the third decade, with discussions of photocopying, microform preservation standards, and equipment. Serials reached a high of 13 percent (42 of 331) during the fourth decade, with articles discussing holdings, linking standards, and serials automation. The lowest proportions for any ALCTS section topic during any decade occurred in the third decade, when serials accounted for only 3 percent (10 of 315) and acquisitions accounted for only 5 percent (16 of 315) of the content.

An analysis of two of the three broad topics, “Library Services (Public and Technical)” and “Publishers/Publishing” shows little variation over the decades. Publishers/Publishing documents hovered around 2 percent for four of the five decades. The exception is in the first decade (1957–1966), when only 0.8 percent of the documents addressed issues of publishing. Documents addressing library services range from a low of 0.9 percent during the first decade to 5.4 percent in the fourth decade, with the average at 1.5 percent. As one would expect given the focus of ALCTS, the largest number of broad topic documents addressed general technical services. The high was during the first decade, with 11.5 percent of the documents on technical services in general; the low was during the fifth decade, with 1.8 percent; the average, 6.6 percent.

Beginning with this section, the discussion will be limited to three types of documents: articles, literature surveys, and papers. During the first fifty years, the authors of these three types of documents have cited 958 journals. (A reminder: In this study, a journal that has changed title over the years is counted as a single title.) During the fifty years, 1,554 articles, literature surveys, and papers have yielded 15,631 citations, for an average of 10.1 citations per article, literature survey, or paper.

The averages are 6.2 citations per article (7,303 citations in 1,182 articles), 42.8 citations per literature survey (7,870 in 184), and 2.4 citations per paper (458 in 188). For all of these types of contributions, the average number of citations steadily increased with each decade. Articles published in the first decade averaged only 2.0 citations per article; the articles published in the fourth and fifth decades averaged 9.4 and 9.5 citations respectively. Literature surveys averaged 7.9 citations in the first decade; by the fourth and fifth decades the average was 89.3 and 85.4 respectively. In comparison, papers have relatively few citations. The average in the first decade was 2.4 per paper; for the fifth decade the average was 5.6 per paper.

Citations from LRTS were examined in two groups. The first group is the citations for literature surveys. The second group is citations for articles and papers. Literature surveys were grouped separately because, by definition, the literature surveys are intended to examine all the literature related to a particular topic over a specific time period. As will be seen, the citing behavior of authors of literature surveys differs from the citing behavior of authors of articles and papers.

Journals for both groups were listed in descending order by number of times they were cited. The twenty-five most cited journals for the fifty years overall and for each decade are shown in appendix B. Fourteen titles appear in the top twenty-five for both groups. The eight most cited titles in literature surveys appear in the top twenty-five for articles and papers. The nine most cited journals in articles and papers appear in the top twenty-five for literature surveys. LRTS and College & Research Libraries are at the top two in both groups, but in different order.

LRTS is the most cited journal by the authors of articles and papers for the last four decades. Kentucky Libraries is the most cited journal by authors of articles and papers for the first decade. Interestingly, during the first decade, LRTS is ranked fifth, with about one-third of the number of citations received by Kentucky Libraries. College & Research Libraries, the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, and Know were the other journals ranking higher than LRTS. The fact that LRTS ranks fifth is not due to the fact that LRTS was a “new” journal during its first decade—LRTS was formed by a merger of Serials Slants and the Journal of Cataloging and Classification. However, in considering these data, it is worth restating that in-text citations were not counted. This methodological decision affects only data from the first decade. Articles in several early issues of LRTS used footnotes or full in-text citations instead of a list of citations at the end of an article, as is common practice today. Without going back and counting the in-text citations, one cannot know if the rank order of titles cited would change were they counted. However, there is no reason to believe that in-text citations would change the ranking of any title over another.

The data in tables 4 and 5 show journals that have appeared for three or more decades in the list of twenty-five most frequently cited by LRTS authors. Table 4 shows the most consistently cited journals by authors of literature reviews. Table 5 shows the most consistently cited journals by authors of articles and papers. Eleven journals appear on both lists. Table 4 contains three journals that are missing from table 5: Inform, Microform and Imaging Review, and International Cataloguing and Bibliographic Control. Interestingly, Inform never appears higher than 44th in rank for articles and papers, and Microform and Imaging Review never appears higher than 35th. Table 5 contains five journals that are missing from table 4: Journal of Documentation, ALCTS Newsletter, Library Quarterly, Library Trends, and Wilson Library Bulletin. The highest proportional rank that Journal of Documentation obtains for surveys is 43rd; the highest for the ALCTS Newsletter by LRTS authors is 53rd, and the highest for Wilson Library Bulletin is 167th. These results seem to indicate that the journals cited frequently for articles and papers also are cited frequently for literature surveys, although a few specific titles are more frequently cited by one group of authors than by the other.

A list of journals whose authors cited LRTS between 1980 and 2005 was compiled from the ISI Web of Science. This list was compared with the list of journal titles cited by LRTS authors for the third through fifth decades (1977–2006). These three decades were chosen for comparison because they most align with the years of data available from the Web of Science. Comparative lists of the top twenty-five journals from both groups are shown in table 6.

The rank order of titles on the Web of Science list confirms the earlier analysis that LRTS authors cite LRTS more than any other source (that is, LRTS is number one on both lists). Other than that similarity, however, the two lists have very little in common. Only nine titles appear in the top twenty-five for both. Thirty-two titles are unique. Other than self-citation (that is, LRTS citing LRTS), the journals to which LRTS authors look as sources of information appear not to be the same journals that rely on LRTS.

In the analysis of the authorship data, no attempt was made to collocate documents under one name for people whose names had changed. With that caveat stated, 1,350 different authors contributed 1554 articles, papers, and literature surveys during the fifty years.

Approximately 79 percent of the authors (1,064 of 1,350) have contributed one document (article, literature survey, or paper) during the fifty years. Nearly 13 percent (172 of 1350) contributed two. Only 0.4 percent contributed more than ten documents. This group is comprised of two authors with thirteen contributions (Lois Mai Chan and Paul S. Dunkin), one author with twelve (Allen B. Veaner), and three with ten (Ross W. Atkinson, Richard M. Dougherty, and Phyllis A. Richmond). Others have made notable contributions to LRTS in addition to the contributions of articles, literature surveys, and papers. Edward Swanson has indexed LRTS for twenty-seven of its fifty years—that is twenty-seven contributions, not counting cumulative indexes that also have been prepared.

No author attribution was provided for 16 of the 1,182 articles appearing in LRTS. Of the remaining 1,166, 910 were authored by one person and 256 were authored by two or more. A comparison of single and multiple authorship over the years shows a steady increase in the proportion of multiple authors. Figure 4 illustrates this trend.

The effort to determine the gender of the first author of the 1,554 articles, literature surveys, and papers identified 797 men and 655 women. Twenty documents had no author attribution, and the gender of eighty-two first authors was not determined. The contributions of men and women are fairly equal during the entire fifty years. Of the 1,452 documents for which gender of first author was determined, men contributed 55 percent (797 of 1,452), and women 45 percent (655 of 1,492). However, breaking down the data by decade and by type of document reveals some differences in the number of contributions by gender. Grouping all types of documents, men contributed in greater proportion for the first two decades, women for the last two. In the third decade (volumes 21–30, 1977–1986), the number of contributions for men and women is similar (males 149; females 132).

Figure 5 shows that the pattern is nearly identical to the overall pattern when articles are considered alone. Men predominated in the first two decades, women in the last two, and the contributions are fairly equal during the third (53 articles by men; 47 by women).

Figure 6 shows that literature surveys were written more frequently by men in the first two decades. However, literature surveys by women are greater in number for the last thirty years. Note that the last decade has only six literature surveys total, one contributed by a men and five by women.

Figure 7 shows that men published the most papers in all decades except the fourth (1987–1996), when women first-author papers numbered fourteen and male first-author papers numbered ten.

One additional observation about LRTS authors. Are we grateful for the assistance and support we receive from others? Or do we at least express our gratitude in the form of explicit acknowledgements? The answer is, not really. In fifty years, only 14 percent (161 of 1,182) of the articles include acknowledgements. An examination of the data may indicate, however, a cultural shift toward acknowledging others. In the first decade, only 1 percent (6 of 289) of the articles included acknowledgments. The numbers have generally increased since then. During the second decade, 5 percent (16 of 289) included acknowledgements; the third decade, 14 percent (35 of 200); the fourth decade, 31 percent (74 of 226); and for the fifth decade, 25 percent (49 of 178).