LIS and STS

Science of science and science and technology studies both draw on Library and Information Science. Someone counts as an LIS person below if they studied the field, worked in it professionally, or were recognized by the field itself — through an award, an editorship, a venue that belongs to LIS, or a law or term the field adopted as its own.

1. 1934

   S. C. Bradford

   LIS PracticeLIS Recognition

   A librarian at London's Science Museum Library. Bradford formulates Bradford's Law, describing how articles on a subject scatter unevenly across journals — a founding result behind how libraries build collections and indexes.

2. 1955

   Eugene Garfield

   LIS EducationLIS PracticeLIS Recognition

   Holding a Master's in Library Science from Columbia. Garfield proposes citation indexing in Science, then founds the Institute for Scientific Information (1960) and publishes the first Science Citation Index (1964).

   Garfield went on to found Current Contents and to introduce the journal impact factor, both of which became standard infrastructure for how the sciences track and evaluate their own literature.

3. 1969

   Alan Pritchard

   LIS EducationLIS Recognition

   Affiliated with London's School of Librarianship at North-Western Polytechnic, writing in the Journal of Documentation, a core library and information science journal. Pritchard coins the term "bibliometrics," giving the field its lasting name.

   He later co-wrote Bibliometrics: A Bibliography and Index with Glenn R. Wittig. Little else about his career is documented — no confirmed librarian post or later academic appointment has been found beyond the School of Librarianship affiliation and an MPhil credential.

4. 1973

   Henry Small

   LIS PracticeLIS Recognition

   Not LIS-trained himself, but three decades as chief scientist at the Institute for Scientific Information, a JASIS editorial board member, and the 1998 recipient of ASIS&T's Award of Merit, the field's highest honor. There he develops co-citation analysis, published in JASIS in 1973, mapping how the literature clusters around shared ideas.

   He led ISI's co-citation-based science mapping, published as the ISI Atlas of Science; his 1973 JASIS paper won the journal's Best Paper Award in 1987, the same year he received the Derek de Solla Price Medal, scientometrics' top honor.