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Dissertation Information for Stephen Bulick

NAME:
- Stephen Bulick

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Library and Information Science

SCHOOL:
- University of Pittsburgh (USA) (1980)

ADVISORS:
- Allen Kent

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Thomas J. Galvin
- James G. Williams
- Donald Shirey
- Jay E. Daily

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: SUBJECT RELATIONS IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES: CONSENSUS AND PARADIGM

Abstract: This dissertation argues that use of a large multidisciplinary monograph collection provides data for the study of a sociology of knowledge, specifically the subject relations among various disciplines, and that certain characteristics of disciplines can be inferred from an examination of their literature and its use. Of particular interest are (a) consensus about disciplinary subject matter among discipline members; (b) use by a discipline of the material from other disciplines; and (c) existence of disciplinary boundaries. It is argued that these are of interest to the sociologist of knowledge as indicators of relative paradigm development and to the librarian as indicators for use in collection development.

Five social science disciplines are studied: geography, anthropology, economics, sociology, and political science. The method is to count the members of various disciplines using books of various subjects and also to count the books. Members are defined as faculty and graduate students who were users of the library during a two year period, disciplines are defined as academic departments, and subjects are defined as Library of Congress Subclasses. Data are first used to show the range and scatter use by each discipline then to develop the pattern of interaction among disciplines. An interesting by-product of the former is that the distribution of books used over ranked subclasses conforms rather closely to Bradford-Zipf.

Social science disciplines, particularly, economics, show evidence of paradigm development, though they are usually considered to be pre-paradigmatic. Disciplines possess a subject core of their own but the use of their literature by social scientists also shows a high degree of interaction among disciplines. Material from economics and sociology are especially important to all five disciplines. In addition, material from the history classes is heavily used by social scientists, indicating that history should probably be considered part of social science. From a subject point of view, social science disciplines have more in common with one another than with other disciplines, indicating that social science is indeed a distinct domain.

It is suggested that the concept of paradigm, which is probably a valid approach to understanding the physical sciences, may not be appropriate to the social sciences which show a different pattern of historical development, consider a different kind of subject matter, and require a more broadly based methodological approach.

MPACT Scores for Stephen Bulick

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-01-31 06:22:19

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Students under Stephen Bulick

ADVISEES:
- None

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- None