Some Bibliographic Practices in Interdisciplinary Work: Accounting for Citations in Library and Information Sciences

Interdisciplinary studies involve the use of concepts, methods and theories developed in other disciplines. Using sociology and library and information science as researchable fields, this paper examines how interdisciplinary presentations appropriate discipline-specific concepts. Itemizing materials in a bibliography is a claim to familiarity with the content of those materials. Bibliographic anomalies are apparent in papers by Elfreda Chatman, published in library and information science journals. Misspellings and disjunctive uses of material suggests that Chatman is unfamiliar with the literature bases she invokes. Working through texts and accompanying bibliographies, this article shows how the entailments of research programs that Chatman claims to use can be reflected back onto her own work. The article provides suggestions on how to make interdisciplinary studies more accountable to academic communities.