Abstract

RUVALCABA BURGOA, Eduardo. Analysis of Use of Information in Estudios Demográficos y Urbanos, 1998-2007. Estud. demogr. urbanos [online]. 2010, vol.25, n.3, pp.733-788. ISSN 2448-6515.

One of the methods used to identify patterns in the use of information consulted by research ers in a set area is the analysis of quotes. The aim of this article is to use this method to determine the information habits of authors that have published in the Estudios Demográficos y Urbanos journal, a group mainly comprising specialists in demography, urban and environmental studies. The aim is to influence the development of the collections in the Daniel Cosío Villegas Library at El Colegio de México on these topics.

A total of 6,559 bibliographical quotes from 162 articles published in the journal during the period from 1998/2007 were analyzed. The information was registered in a data-base prepared by Microsoft Access and subsequently exported to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, in order to quantitatively analyze the data on the basis of previously defined indicators.

The most outstanding results are given below: Books account for the highest percentage of works cited (34.7%); Mexico is the country where the majority of the documents cited are edited (38.92%); Estudios Demográficos y Urbanos is the journal most widely cited by the researchers that published during that period; Spanish (51.55%) and English (43.33%) are the languages most frequently consulted by the authors. Only 26.73% of the total references cited were published in the five years prior to the date in which they were consulted, which may be due to the lack of literature on new topics, innovative approaches and highly specialized subjects, the difficulty of obtaining reliable, up-to-date information on either Mexico or Latin America and in some cases, to the out-of-date material consulted by the authors, among other factors.

An analysis of the results obtained enabled the author to make suggestions about the policies for developing the collections, related to the language they are published in and the topicality of the documents. It also shows the need to increase the acquisition of collections such as those in INEGI and Conapo.

Keywords : use of information; analysis of quotes; policies for developing collections.