Role of libraries in promoting education: a bibliometric analysis (2012-2016)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the authorship patterns and the relationship between them based on some statistical indices for the role of libraries in promoting education at the global level. Design/methodology/approach The Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) database was searched for the peer-reviewed and full text available journal articles that contained specific words related to either libraries and education or libraries and e-learning in. Data were analysed based on certain statistical calculations to find out the degree of collaboration, collaborative coefficient, Shannon index, Simpson’s indices, Spearman’s coefficient and co-authorship pattern. Findings The criteria were met by 262 publications by 517 authors. The highest number of articles related with the role of libraries in education was published in the year 2013, and the highest numbers of articles were authored by a single author rather than multiple authors. The degree of collaboration was found to be highest in the year 2015 and 2016 with a value of 0.66, whereas the collaborative coefficient was highest in the year 2016 with a value 0.42. The Shannon’s diversity index was found to be 2.73705 with an evenness of 1.24568. The Simpson’s index, Simpson’s index of diversity and Simpson’s reciprocal index were found to be 0.299, 0.701 and 3.3444, respectively. The Spearman’s coefficient was found to be highest with a positive correlation of value 0.95 in the year 2013. Furthermore, six co-occurrences by eight authors were found. Research limitations/implications Only the ERIC database was chosen for the study and only articles published from the year 2012 to 2016 were included in the analysis. Originality/value This study will be useful for researchers to get an insight into the collaborative research patterns demonstrated by the authors in understanding the role of libraries in education using different statistical approaches.