A41. Rice, R.E. & Crawford, G. (1992). Context and content of citations between communication and library & information science articles. In J. Schement & B. Ruben (Eds.) Information and behavior, vol. 4. (pp. 189-217.) New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press.

The present study considers the broad question, "is there a convergence between information and communication?", by focusing narrowly on citation relations between the disciplines of communication and library and information science, but in depth by analyzing the articles’ authors, dates, titles words, nature, and citation context of the relations. The data consist of those articles in communication journals and library & information science journals that made citations to or received citations from the other discipline from 1977 through 1987.

Most frequent article title words varied between citing/cited communication or LIS articles, with the most frequent including "information", "communication", "system", "research", "telecommunication", "organization", "computer-mediated", "policy", "library", etc. LIS articles not only cite Communication articles more frequently, but also do so a bit more quickly. Authors of cited communication articles were more numerous, with many multiple frequencies, than of citing communication articles, and belonged to distinct network positions representing domestic and international telecommunications policy, academic and bibliometric evaluation, theory and research about computer-mediated communication, use of print media, and network information services. In general, possible areas of developing convergence between the two disciplines includes pragmatic issues of telecommunication policy, and social (not technical) research on computer-mediated communication, along with some uses of documents and archives, written about by a variety of authors who do not yet constitute a cross-disciplinary invisible college.