REFLECTING THE MATURATION OF A PROFESSION - 35 YEARS OF LIBRARY RESOURCES AND TECHNICAL-SERVICES

In the humanities and in technology, social circles that function around orientation paradigms Influence the development of new ideas and provide explanations of phenomena in much the same way as do scientific circles. One view of librarianship is that it is a technological field. Elements of scientific knowledge influence the development of new techniques and services. In ALCTS, Library Resources and Technical Services (LRTS) is the official journal, the gatekeeper that since 1957 has provided the membership with quarterly advances in knowledge and techniques for collections and technical services. This article is a report of a research project undertaken in an attempt to define LRTS' content over its lifetime and to see whether LRTS displays the characteristics of a formal, scholarly communication venue. The entire ran of LRTS' first 35 volumes was examined. Overall we observed a maturation in LRTS, similar to that reported by other researchers in library and information science (LIS). In many ways LRTS reflects the characteristics of the core LIS journals, which increasingly fall into a scholarly range. The proportion of articles that report research, the increase in that proportion overtime and numbers of citations per article across the areas of interest are further evidence of this. The research literatures of cataloging and classification, collection management and development, and preservation-the core of ALCTS interests-show remarkable similarities and fall within the hypothesized region derived from earlier examinations of periodical literature in bibliographic control and LIS in general. In sum, LRTS by and large reflects the growth of a maturing, scholarly discipline surrounding the orientation paradigms that ALCTS exists to serve.