"The Concept Of ""development Literature"" And The Establishment Of Criteria For The Creation Of A Development Data Base (developing Countries--information; Devsis, Undis Retrieval Systems)"
Howell, John Bruce
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Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/69487
Description
Title
"The Concept Of ""development Literature"" And The Establishment Of Criteria For The Creation Of A Development Data Base (developing Countries--information; Devsis, Undis Retrieval Systems)"
Author(s)
Howell, John Bruce
Issue Date
1984
Department of Study
Library Science
Discipline
Library Science
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Information Science
Abstract
There were 2 goals of this study: (1) the definition of "development literature" and (2) the identification of criteria for establishing a data base of development literature. An analysis of 4 development data bases: DEVSIS (Ottawa), DEVSIS-Africa (Addis Ababa), UN-DIS (New York), and US-DIS (Washington) was realized to determine subject content arranged by Macrothesaurus facet and descriptor, geographic spread, languages of the documents indexed, and institutions as sources for development literature.
The definition of development literature took the form of 41 profile morphemes, refined forms of subject descriptors, accounting for 65% of all subject postings in the 4 development data bases. In order to determine a good estimate of the amount of development literature, Morocco was chosen to be the sample country in 23 data bases from the DIALOG Information Retrieval Service and the SDC Information Services that had more than one percent (148 postings) of the total postings for all Morocco citations (14,857 postings). In order to distinguish development related literature from non-development-related literature, a set of working criteria was created that satisfies the second goal of the study. When the working criteria were applied to the sampled literature for Morocco, it was determined that approximately 50% of the online literature, or 7,374 postings, was development-related. In addition, Morocco was found to have a unique "subject profile" of economic and commercial interests that distinguish it from other developing countries, notably its large deposits of phosphates and other minerals such as cobalt, and its proximity to European markets for its fruits and vegetables.
Using the percentages for Morocco, estimates were made for 9 other developing countries: Argentina, Ecuador, Fiji, the Gambia, Honduras, Nepal, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, and the Sudan. Including the Moroccan data, there was an estimate of 80,245 citations in 64 online data bases. As the study did not account for the other 118 developing countries, it is estimated that there may be more than 1,000,000 citations online relevant to the development of Third World countries.
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