Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine research trends on theory use in Korean LIS, and ultimately to identify its academic growth and change. This study conducted content analysis, with a sample of 344 articles in Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science during the past five years from 2010 to 2014. Then longitudinal analysis was additionally carried out by comparing with a data set from 1984 to 2003. Findings are as follows. 13.7% of research articles used theories on average 2.02 times. The most theories were deployed at the level of Spot Citing and the next most theories were at the level of Theory Application. Research on the subject of education and information use/seeking used theories most frequently. Theories from LIS were 31.9% and those from social science were 58.3% of all. Also, longitudinal analysis results support the conclusion that there was no quantitative increase but was clear qualitative growth in theoretical research of LIS. And the current theoretical framework of LIS research has closer relationships with pedagogy and psychology among social science disciplines than in the past.