Exploring the Applicability of Lotka’s Law: Bibliometric Insights into the Preservation and Conservation of Libraries

Abstract

The study focused on publishing trends, most productive institution, authorship pattern, most prolific author, lengthwise distribution of articles, articles with the highest citations and an attempt to apply Lotka’s Law. For the marked time (1992-2023), this study involves a bibliometric analysis of 233 research articles published in the Web of Science Core Collection database from 1990 to 2023.A preliminary search determined 468 papers, which were further filtered using the established parameters and then 233 articles were all investigated. The study revealed there is almost no growth of number of publications on ‘preservation and conservation of libraries’ within specified time period. The top leading journal found in this study is Restaurator with 186 (79.83%) publications published by Walter De Gruyter Gmbh from Germany. Banik, G is most prolific author and ranked first with highest number of publications (n=7) followed by three authors on the second rank. The most cited article is ‘Phytate - a potential conservation agent for the treatment of ink corrosion caused by irongall inks’ authored by Neevel, Jg. K-S Test confirmed that Lotka’s Law of Scientific Productivity is fit for the collected articles on ‘Preservation and conservation of libraries’.