THE USE OF SOCIAL SCIENCE PERIODICAL LITERATURE

The paper presents the results of a survey of the use of social science periodicals carried out at the National Lending Library during a period of four weeks in 1968. Three‐quarters of the requests came from universities and industrial organizations and over 90% of the requests were for English language publications. Over a fifth of the requests were for seventeen titles. There were marked variations in the subject matter requested by different types of organizations and although the overall ‘half‐life’ of the literature proved to be 3½ years this figure varied considerably from one subject to another. Concerning the sources of references, it was discovered that compared with scientists and technologists social scientists make relatively little use of abstracting and indexing publications. Appendixes include a copy of the questionnaire used in the survey, a list of titles requested six or more times, and a list of abstracting and indexing publications cited five or more times as sources of references.