The Study of the Thematic Structure of Special Libraries: Co-word Analysis and Network Analysis

Specialized libraries have a significant role in the strategic position of the
organization, need to meet the human resource information needs and
provide tailored plans for the growth of the organization. Therefore, the
purpose of this study is to examine the thematic structure of articles related
to specialized libraries during the years 1999-2017 by the method of co-
word analysis. The present study, with a scientometric approach, has
studied the co-occurrence thematic of articles in specialized libraries. A
total of 1976 articles (1999-2017) was extracted from his web of science by
searching for "Special librar * along with other searches related to
specialized libraries." Data analysis after integration using software
Netdraw, Ucinet, Ravar PreMap. The findings showed that according to
indicators of closeness and betweenness centrality, concepts such as health
care, information services, management of specialized libraries,
competence, etc. are among the most used topics in this field and most of
the scientific outputs related to the United States and England belongs. The
results showed that the main focus of the articles on specialized libraries
related to human issues in the library. In other words, more attention has
been paid to the issues of librarians and library staff. The lack of topics such
as resource storage and retrieval, performance measurement, library design,
and construction, etc., is a sign of less attention by researchers in these
areas.