Jean-Pierre V. M. Hérubel

Liberal Arts Books on Demand: A Decade of Patron-Driven Collection Development, Part 1

The Purdue University Libraries was an early implementer of purchasing rather than borrowing books requested through interlibrary loan. This pioneering user-initiated acquisitions program, started in January 2000 and called Books on Demand, is managed by the interlibrary loan unit. Now that the program has reached its tenth year, the authors revisit their initial 2002 study to analyze books purchased in the six top subject areas across the whole decade. In their review of the liberal arts titles selected, subject librarians found that the books were appropriate additions and that these titles expanded the cross-disciplinary nature of the collection. The Books on Demand service offers a seamless method for all users, especially graduate students, to provide input into the collection building process.

Some Thoughts on Opportunities for Collection Development Librarians

New and emerging roles are transforming the landscape of academic librarianship. This paper focuses on the changes facing academic librarians whose activities and responsibilities in collections are shifting, particularly in the face of greater emphasis on user-driven collection development. Librarians’ reduced role in routine collection development translates into gaining more time and support to move in other directions. Among many exciting and interesting opportunities, librarians apply their subject expertise in such strategic initiatives as information literacy, research, e-science, digital humanities projects, and collaborative print retention efforts. They can also participate more in campus affairs.

Acknowledging Clio's Lesser Children: The Importance of Journals for Historical Research and Scholarship

History journals are a major force in historical research and scholarship. Publishing research in journals offers scholars greater intellectual flexibility, increased specialization, and opportunities to engage in more innovative approaches to historical research. Although a counterpart to the monograph, the journal is not a lesser component in the scholarly communication of historical scholarship but a necessary agent in maintaining and expanding the purview of historical research and intellectual evolution. Without the scholarly history journal, historical research and published scholarship would be impoverished, less capable of creative evolution vis-à-vis disciplinary evolution and the generation of newer vectors of research.

Situating Clio's Influence in Humanities and Social Science Monographs: Disciplinary Affiliations and Historical Scholarship

Historical scholarship is found in various humanities and social science disciplines. Beyond the traditional historically oriented research and scholarship, as vetted by historians trained and educated in the profession, historical scholarship is situated within other disciplinary configurations as well. This essay offers a larger intellectual discussion of historical research and scholarship published in disciplinary venues outside history proper. Using AHCI and SSCI databases, data were collected for book reviews appearing between 1977 and 2006 to ascertain disciplinary and journal affiliations. Historical scholarship is situated in many fields in which a historical perspective or historiographically grounded scholarship is pursued. Indeed, the historical enterprise is much more intellectually pervasive vis-à-vis other disciplines than may be commonly supposed.

Historical Scholarship, Periodization, Themes, and Specialization: Implications for Research and Publication

Within the scholarly communication system, historical scholarship represents a burgeoning and evolving intellectual topography. This discussion attempts to frame historical research and scholarship within a contextual disciplinary environment where specialization and the use of historical periodization and discrete themes reflect necessary conditions of historical research and scholarship. Normative practice and conditions animating the academic historical enterprise generate and maintain the drive to specialization appearing in various publication venues. Historians necessarily hone specific periods, themes, or orientations, addressing historiographic conditions that lie at the centre of historical research and scholarship. The drive toward highly articulated monographs, journals, and reference publications speaks to this particular phenomenon in historical research and scholarship. The logic animating graduate history education and training and the momentum toward specialization, as well as hyper-specialization, exert influence, if not pressure, upon the scholarly publication system. Historians concentrating on highly honed and articulated research endeavour to disseminate their scholarship in venues that address their intellectual and historiographic orientations and preoccupations. The disciplinary and intellectual morphology of historical research and scholarly publication cannot be adequately appreciated without considering these phenomena.

Metadisciplinarity, Belles Lettres, and André Malraux

Abstract A theoretical and conceptual mapping of the contours of knowledge emerges through a bibliometric approach using the Arts and Humanities Citation Index. Focusing on André Malraux and his writings, one can discern how bibliometrics can effectively explore the subtle characteristics of disciplinary knowledge, and how their permutations reflect the evolution of knowledge along a metadisciplinary continuum. Evidence indicates that Malrauxs non-disciplinary, i.e., belles-lettres, writing has influenced theoretical thinking in a number of disciplines. Malrauxs intellectual and cultural influence can be effectively pursued through referential analysis. This theoretical approach provides a viable conceptual model of intellectual mutation, influence, and bibliometric veracity. This studys results show that this methodology could be applied effectively in other areas of intellectual history and cultural studies.

Taking Clio's Pulse . . .: or, Examining Characteristics of Monographic Publications Reviewed by American Historical Review

Examining trends in research publications can yield an appreciation of where a discipline is moving and of its core intellectual orientations, specific and general subject interests, and disciplinary contours. This discussion considers the major contours of academic history publication as reviewed by the flagship generalist journal American Historical Review (AHR). The AHRs topical indexes for the years 2000-2009 were used to gather essential data from which salient disciplinary features could be examined in order to situate academic historys scholarly preoccupations. Various constellations of specialization, focused emphases, and general contours of intellectual activity emerged.

Clio's View of the History of Science

Abstract Historical research and scholarship form a matrix of specialties depending on the object studied and the period under examination. The history of science is examined for its particular characteristics as evidenced in the cumulative bibliographies published in Isis, a premier journal devoted to the history of science for 1986–2003. A bibliometric examination of publication trends and specializations are explored through the historical periodizations inherent in historical studies. The history of science conforms to a unique evolution and professional orientation among the various fields in professional and academic history.

Identifying the Intellectual Contours of a Historical Specialty: Geographical, Temporal, and Subject Emphases of the Journal of the History of Ideas

ABSTRACT The Journal of the History of Ideas was analyzed using the descriptors and subject headings for the articles as indexed in Historical Abstracts. A bibliometric approach was used to investigate the evolution and intellectual core of the history of ideas as they revealed disciplinary orientations characteristic of a specialized, yet highly interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary, historical subfield. Unlike other areas of historical research, intellectual history is both extremely fluid and dynamic, often incorporating aspects of other fields and melding them into new syntheses and disciplinary configurations.

Musings on Disciplinary Morphology and Nomenclature in the Humanities and Social Sciences: Implications for Book Selection

Scholarly publication reflects disciplinary orientation, so much so that publishers and library collections personnel use disciplinary nomenclature as referent. University press publications, as well as other serious academic publication venues, may reflect disciplinary nomenclature, if not alignment with those disciplines featured in the AAUP Directory. Using the Directorys discipline and publisher grid for 2007, the article discusses disciplinary nomenclature with the idea of proposing a model or perspective that illuminates the nuances and organic nature of knowledge not easily captured by disciplinary nomenclature. Commonly accepted currency in the academic enterprise, disciplinary nomenclature may be best seen as an organically foundational approach to knowledge discovery and generation and, ultimately, as situated within scholarly communication venues. As knowledge is organic in nature, it may best be seen through the morphology of disciplinary formation and ecology, permitting nuances to emerge as organic formations and intellectual contours. This useful and flexible definitional approach to disciplinarities – subdisciplinarity as well as multi-disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and trans-disciplinarity – permits scholars, publishers, and librarians a perspective subtle enough to consider an intellectual cartography that includes the organic nature of scholarship as well as the publication of that knowledge. Such fields as American studies, Middle Eastern studies, and urban studies offer additional perspective when confronted with disciplinary nomenclature. Without disparaging the received wisdom and attribution commonly ascribed to disciplinary nomenclature as used by researchers, publishers, and librarians, the scholarly communication system requires additional perspective, especially where nomenclature is concerned.