Citation Analysis for Collection Development

Citation analysis for collection development studies what a library's own community actually cites, in their theses, dissertations, and publications, and uses those patterns to guide what the library should buy, keep, and cancel. Rather than mapping the global structure of a field, it asks a local, practical question: which formats, languages, ages, and specific titles do our researchers rely on? By tabulating the references in locally produced scholarship, the method reveals, for example, whether a discipline depends on monographs or journals, how quickly its literature ages, and which journals or books appear most often, evidence that can be matched against holdings to find gaps and guide budgets. Knievel and Kellsey's comparative study of eight humanities fields showed how sharply these citation patterns vary by discipline, underscoring why collection decisions should rest on field-specific local evidence.