Distance Learning Librarianship Research Over Time: Changes and the Core Literature.

Central Michigan University has hosted 11 Off-Campus Library Services Conferences since 1982. This paper studies the proceedings of the 11 conferences to identify patterns of research. The authors were interested in determining how the field of distance learning library services has changed over that 22 year period as evidenced by the topics presented and the types of papers included in the proceedings. The authors analyzed the contributed papers and assigned those papers to specific subject tracks. The authors also considered the sources used by the presenters in order to identify works that may be considered seminal in this field. Distance learning librarianship is a field that has grown and matured, but there has been little research to date into the core literature of the field. This paper attempts to identify some of those core works through an analysis of the citations used in these Sets of proceedings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]