Poster presentation at American Library Association (ALA) annual conference, with David S. Nolen, San Francisco, CA, July 2015

1. To select a sample small enough to be manageable but large enough
for meaningful analysis, the authors identified literary works that had been
included on the reading list for the comprehensive exams for the M.A. in
English over a three-year span (2011-2013). These reading lists provide
a window into the core literary texts that the department expected its
students to understand comprehensively by the time of their completion
of the graduate program. Each year’s list included works by 16 different
authors. Ten different author/title combinations appeared on the list each
year from 2011-2013.
In order to pilot this methodology, the authors selected one author/
title combination that was included in the list every year from 2011-2013
and that provided a sample size that was large enough for analysis but not
so large as to be unmanageable for a pilot project. The authors selected Jane
Austen’s Persuasion as the work to examine, conducted a “Primary Subject
Work” search in MLA International Bibliography in December 2014, and
limited the results to book-format resources published since 1990. This
yielded 5 monographs and 57 unique book articles on Persuasion.
The authors then examined the resources cited by each of those 5
monographs and 57 book articles, recording the bibliographic citation
data in Excel spreadsheets. The authors recorded data for resources cited
explicitly in the bibliography or footnotes/endnotes of the sample work
or in the text of the study. The authors then assigned the resources to 1 of
5 categories based on the characteristics of that cited item: monographs,
volumes of collected essays, journal articles, Jane Austen editions, and
other. For the purposes of this study, the authors use the following definitions:
• Monographs: single-author, single-subject, book-length studies.
• Collectedessays:book-formatpublicationswhosecontentsareessays
orarticles(usuallybymultipleauthors)appearinginaneditedcollection.
• Jane Austen edition: any citations to the various editions of Jane
Austen’s literary works (including citations to introductions or
scholarly essays or articles included in critical editions)
• Other: archival sources, reference works, literary works not authored
by Jane Austen, correspondence, and films.
David S. Nolen, Associate Professor, Assistant Editor/Reference Librarian, Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library/Congressional and Political Research Center
Hillary A. H. Richardson, Assistant Professor/Humanities Librarian
• The level of overlap underwhelmed the authors of the current
study who had presumed there would be more shared citations
among scholarly works dedicated to studies of not only the same
author, but the same literary work.
• At the level of journal title and volume of collected essay, there was
very little overlap in terms of the authors’ expectations.
• The eponymous journal Persuasions was cited by only 13
sample book articles (roughly 23% of the sample) and only 3
of the 5 sample books (only 22% of all journal citations);
• One volume of collected essays (Jane Austen in Hollywood)
was cited by only 5 sample book articles (approximately 9%)
and only 2 of the 5 books.
• Two monograph titles appeared in 12 (Jane Austen and the
War of Ideas) and 10 (Tanner’s Jane Austen) of the book
articles in the sample, with those titles also being cited in 4
and 2 of the books, respectively.
• Unsurprisingly, the highest level of overlap in title was to the
Primary Subject Work, Persuasion. However, only 47 of the 57 book
articles cited some edition of the literary text Persuasion, while 10
of the 57 book articles did not cite Persuasion at all in the
bibliography or in the text. The authors of the current study believe
this can be accounted for primarily by the fact that numerous
studies in the sample focused on the film adaptations of Jane
Austen’s works, and thus may or may not have cited the literary text itself.
• Author overlap was just as diverse, with Jane Austen herself
receiving 17.5% of all citations. The next highest cited author, B. C.
Southam, was only cited 2.9% of the time.
• All in all, the data from this sample does not point to a neat core
of resources but to a high level of diversity among the resources
used. These patterns (or lack thereof) correlate to Budd’s
observation that “American literature consists of the products of the
imagination of many individuals over a period of a few hundred
years . . . [Scholars], using the products of imaginations as their
laboratory, are therefore likely to draw from varied materials in the
course of conducting their research or formulating critical ideas”
(1986, p. 192).
• This points to the importance of the immediate needs of local
users and collaborative collection development to best utilize scarce
resources. In examining the local collection to evaluate holdings for
scholarship on Jane Austen’s Persuasion at Mississippi State
University Libraries, the authors discovered 13 of 19 “overlapping”
titles (68%) were present in the collection.
Looking for Landmarks:
A Citation Analysis of English Literary Scholarship for Collection Development
Introduction
Citation studies have documented the presence of landmark articles in a number of scholarly fields over the
years, especially in the sciences. But can landmark works— studies of such great impact that scholars consider them
foundational to the discipline—be documented in humanities disciplines through citation analysis? The authors of
the current study set out to test for the presence of landmark works in certain areas of English literary scholarship
with collection development in mind. By conducting a citation study on a specific niche within English literary
studies, the authors hoped to identify core groups of scholarly works for that area of study that could be used as a
tool for collection development and provide a picture of literary scholarship on a more granular level.
Literature Review
While many facets of citation patterns in the humanities remain unexplored, there are a handful of
significant studies that have contributed to the scholarly conversation, especially with regards to collection
development. While none directly addresses the hypothesis of a “landmark” work that figures into citation
patterns, several studies mention observations of the trend - or lack thereof. Heinzkill (1980), Stern (1983),
Cullars (1985), and Budd (1986), found through citation analyses of a wide range of notable journals of
literary scholarship that English literary scholars largely preferred books and monographs to journal articles
or “other” sources (e.g. newspapers, dissertations, etc.). They also noted that age and subject area cover an
entire spectrum, indicating a contrast with the predominance of current journal articles in the sciences and
social sciences.
Thompson conducted a citation study on a sample of books in nineteenth-century English and American
literature, finding that “[t]he breadth of the academic fields in this study – the coverage of both American
and British Literature across the entire nineteenth century (as opposed to one particular period) –created
a broadly distributed group of authors,” but “[n]o core group of either was evident” (2007, p. 129). In an
updated look at his 1980 article, Heinzkill examined 555 journal articles in English and American literary
studies and found the research profile to be consistent with almost 30 years of citation studies, with English
literary scholars citing monographs 77.1% of the time, but “there were not any works that could be considered
to be heavily cited” (Heinzkill, 2007, p. 145). While this study also examines the secondary literature of
English literary scholars and finds similar results, the authors focus this study on a local, pinpointed area in
the field of English scholarship.
Budd, J. (1986). Characteristics of written scholarship in American Literature: A citation study. LISR, 8, 189-211.
Cullars, J. (1985). Characteristics of the monographic literature of British and American literary studies.
College & Research Libraries, 46(6), 511-522.
Heinzkill, R. (1980). Characteristics of references in selected scholarly English literary journals.
Library Quarterly, 50(3), 352-365.
Heinzkill, R. (2007). References in scholarly English and American literary journals thirty years later: A citation study.
College & Research Libraries, 68(2), 141-153.
Thompson, J. W. (2002). The death of the scholarly monograph in the humanities? Citation patterns in literary
scholarship. LIBRI, 52, 121-136.
Data Profile
Search Results from MLA International Bibliography
Books 5
Book Articles 57
Total Resources 62
Total Citations 2683
Book Articles
Raw Number of Citations 1188
Average Citations per Article 20.84
Highest Number of Citations in a Single Article 84
Lowest Number of Citations in a Single Article 3
Raw Number of Citations 1495
Citations per Book 299
Highest Number of Citations in a Single Book 613
Lowest Number of Citations in a Single Book 53
Books
Category Breakdown of Full Sample
Category Frequency
monograph 1039
collected essays 421
journal article 376
other 633
JA edition 209
Total 2678
39%
14%8%
23%
16%
monograph
journal article
JA edition
other
collected essays
Other Items
23%
24%30%
21%
2% 0%
Reference Title
other
Pre-1900
literary work
JA correspondence
film
14%
35%
4%
13%
6%
28% films
literary works
reference works
pre-1900
JA correspondence
other
Citations to Jane Austen
Editions
26%
24%
5%
29%
11%
5%
Total Citations to Jane Austen's
Novels
Emma
Mansfield Park
Northanger Abbey
Persuasion
Pride and Prejudice
Sense and Sensibility
13%
14%
10%
38%
17%
8%
Overlapping Book Article Citations to
Jane Austen's Novels
Emma
Mansfield Park
Northanger Abbey
Persuasion
Pride and Prejudice
Sense and Sensibility
Citations to Unique Journals
*Cited by 4 of 5
Critical Inquiry
English Literary History
†Cited by 3 of 5
Persuasions
Nineteenth-Century Fiction
82%
14%
2%
2%
Cited by 1
Cited by 2
Cited by 3
Cited by 4
*Cited by 13:
Persuasions: the Jane Austen Journal
†Cited by 7:
Nineteenth-Century Literature
English Literary History (ELH)74%
10%
6%
5%
1% 3%
1%
cited by 1
cited by 2
cited by 3
cited by 4
cited by 5
cited by 7
cited by 13
*Cited by 4 of 5
Jane Austen: New Perspectives, ed. Janet Todd
Jane Austen’s Business, ed. Jan Fergus
†Cited by 3 of 5
Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, ed. B. C. Southam
Jane Austen and the Discourses of Feminism, ed. Devoney Looser
Citations to Unique Essay
Collections86%
11%
1% 2%
Cited by 1
Cited by 2
Cited by 3
Cited by 4
*Cited by 5:
Jane Austen in Hollywood edited by Linda Troost and Sayre Greenfield
†Cited by 4:
Jane Austen: A Collection of Critical Essays edited by Ian Watt
Jane Austen’s Business: Her World and Her
Profession edited by Juliet McMaster and Bruce Stovel
New Casebooks: Mansfield Park and Persuasion edited by Judy Simons
‡Cited by 3:
Jane Austen: New Perspectives edited by Janet Todd
Jane Austen: Bicentenary Essays edited by John Halperin
Jane Austen on Screen edited by Gina MacDonald and Andrew MacDonald
84%
9%
3% 3% 1%
cited by 1
cited by 2
cited by 3
cited by 4
cited by 5
Citations to Unique
Monographs91%
6%
2% 1%
Cited by 1
Cited by 2
Cited by 3
Cited by 4
*Cited by 4 of 5
Jane Austen and her Art by Mary Lascelles
Jane Austen and the War of Ideas by Marilyn Butler
Jane Austen: A Life by Claire Tomalin
Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel by Claudia L. Johnson
The Improvement of the Estate by Alistair Duckworth
The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer by Mary Poovey
*Cited by 12:
Jane Austen and the War of Ideas by Marilyn Butler
†Cited by 10:
Jane Austen by Tony Tanner
‡Cited by 7:
Jane Austen: Feminism and Fiction by Margaret Kirkham
Jane Austen: Irony as Defense and Discovery by
Marvin Mudrick
Some Words of Jane Austen by Stuart Tave
83%
11%
2%
2%
0% 1% 1%
0%
0%
Cited by 1
Cited by 2
Cited by 3
Cited by 4
Cited by 5
Cited by 6
Cited by 7
Cited by 10
Cited by 12
Citations by Category
Category Frequency Average
monograph 626 125.2
collected essays 273 54.6
journal article 217 43.4
other 336 67
Jane Austen edition 43 8.6
Total 1495 298.8
42%
18%
15%
22%
3%
monograph
collected essays
journal article
other
Jane Austen edition
Category Frequency Average
collected essays 148 2.59
JA edition 166 2.91
journal article 159 2.79
monograph 413 7.24
other 297 5.21
unknown 5 0
Total 1188 20.84*
*sum does not equal overall average due to rounding
13%
14%
13%
35%
25%
0%
collected essays
Jane Austen edition
journal article
monograph
other
unknown
BOOKS BOOK ARTICLES Discussion and ConclusionsMethodology
9.30%
18.60%
46.51%
20.93%
20.93%
0.00% 10.00% 20.00% 30.00% 40.00% 50.00%
RW CHAPMAN
OXFORD
PENGUIN
NORTON
OTHER OR UNKNOWN
Percentage of Books Citing Specific
Editions of Jane Austen's Works
40.35%
50.88%
22.81%
56.14%
0.00% 10.00% 20.00% 30.00% 40.00% 50.00% 60.00%
RW CHAPMAN
OXFORD
PENGUIN
NO EDITIIONSPECIFIED
Percentage of Book Articles Citing
Specific Editions of Jane Austen's Works
alaac15.ala.org/node/29552
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