Numerical Methods of Analysis ESTIMATING OF A BIBLIOGRAPHY

IT IS ONLY in the last eight or ten years that the numerical aspects of bibliography have attracted attention, although some of the numerical regularities that occur in bibliography have been known for thirty or forty years. Results are, therefore, still meager and applications are still few. Moreover, most of the work so far reported has been limited to numerical analysis of the literature of the natural sciences. This is in part because the secondary sources in the natural sciences are the best organized and so provide the most accessible data; in part because the literature of the natural sciences are the least restricted by linguistic barriers; and in part because the proposed worldwide systems , such as those advocated in the UNISIST report, offer an immediate field of application in the design of economic and efficient systems based on the results of numerical bibliographic analysis. However, the field of possible application is gradually widening: serious efforts are now being made to organize the more diffused literatures of the social sciences, for example. The main practical purposes that numerical analysis can serve are based on the belief that quantification is a necessary component of the design of economic information systems and that measurement of the key processes of an information system is a necessary component of management control. The present main objectives of numerical analysis are: 1. the design of more economic information systems and networks; 2. the improvement of the efficiencies of information-handling processes; 3. the identification and measurement of deficiencies in present bibliographical services; 4. the prediction of publishing trends; and 5. the discovery and elucidation of empirical laws which could form the basis for developing a theory of information science.