Boone Library School (Wuhan), established in 1920, is the first institution of higher education in library science in modern China. Over its 33-year tenure, more than one hundred full-time and part-time faculty members taught there. Their pedagogical practices and scholarly contributions significantly shaped modern library science's theoretical and institutional foundations in China. This study seeks to analyze the thematic distribution and evolutionary trajectories of their academic contributions, thereby offering a comprehensive exploration of the origins and progression of Chinese library science from a historical perspective.
This study systematically collects 303 publications authored by 46 faculty members who taught at Boone Library School (Wuhan) from 1920 to 1953. Through content analysis, it examines these works' temporal, authorial, and journal-based distribution. Furthermore, subject term identification and data coding delineate the thematic distribution and evolutionary trends. Furthermore, subject term identification and data coding delineate the thematic distribution and evolutionary trends. The analysis also investigates the underlying social and historical factors shaping these patterns.
The academic research of Boone Library School (Wuhan) faculty is distributed across 21 primary and 103 secondary topics, focusing on librarianship, classification scheme, research and guidance on professional work, library buildings and equipment, the development of librarianship in China, and public libraries. Additionally, two thematic evolutionary threads are observed: librarianship and bibliography. Practical needs, policy, and the influence of foreign library science shaped the distribution and evolution of these themes.
Unlike studies focused on individual scholars or specific topics, this study comprehensively analyzes the faculty's collective academic contributions. By highlighting their research focus and trajectory, it examines the discourse system of early Chinese library science from a group perspective.
