What is bibliometrics evaluation?

For many years, the sheer size of a traditional library collection was used as the primary indicator of its quality, but more recently, the quality of a library has been judged on the basis of other factors such as perceptions of customer service and impact on education and research outcomes (Hernon, 2002). Although collection size is also an issue in digital libraries, it is already obvious that the quality of digital libraries will be judged more in terms of the degree to which they meet the needs of their patrons (Choudhury, Hobbs, Lorie, & Flores, 2002). Bibliometrics is a promising approach for evaluating the impact of digital libraries.

Bibliometrics evaluation in the context of digital libraries is a relatively novel approach whereby bibliometric techniques are applied to determine the impact and rankings of documents and journals for the users of a digital library (Bollen & Luce, 2002; Bollen, Luce, Vemulapalli, & Xu, 2003). Data collected using bibliometric methods can be used to inform decisions regarding acquisitions for the collection, organization of the collection, and services provided. For example, citation and co-citation analysis statistics can be helpful in providing information about the value of objects within the digital library collection. Citation and co-citation analysis of your digital library collection can highlight the objects contained in your collection that are highly regarded outside of your digital library user community as well as within your user community. One of the major advantages of bibliometrics as an evaluation approach is that much of the data needed may already be routinely collected within a digital library.