Introduction

At international level research in Library and Information Science (LIS) started during the second decade of the previous century. In India individual research started in 1930s with Dr. S.R. Ranganathan who was actively involved in various areas of librarianship viz. classification, cataloguing, documentation library administration etc. LIS education in India though started as early as in 1911, it was only after the World War II that it was gradually recognized as a full-fledged discipline. Separate departments of LIS were setup in the universities and started offering courses to bachelors and master degree level. This eventually set the stage for formal research activities in the subject. However, Ranganathan was conducted research in almost every sphere of LIS areas informally and single handedly. Not only that, he was also responsible for the instituting master degree and PhD programmes for the first time in Delhi University with the active co-operation of Sir Maurice Ggwyer, the then vice chancellor of Delhi University, in 1948 and 1950–1951 respectively. The first PhD degree was awarded in University of Delhi to B. Krishna Rao in 1957 (Hatua 2009).

LIS has been recognized as an independent discipline like others. At present around 128 universities and colleges offer BLISc course, 93 provide the MLISc courses while 21 schools/departments offer 2-year integrated courses. Nearly 16 universities offer M.Phil. and 82 universities are providing Ph.D. in LIS. Only two universities awarded D.Litt Degree in LIS. In addition, DRTC, NCSI, DESIDOC etc. are offering advance level LIS programme. The UGC Model Curriculum Report (Lahiri 1996), 2001 lists six levels of courses in LIS education in India, starting from Certificate, Diploma, Bachelor, P.G. Diploma (PGDIT, PGDA and PGDLAN), Masters and PhD.

There are also a number of problems that libraries and librarianship are facing. A good number of researches can help to solve those problems, expand the human knowledge base and develop better and advanced tools and techniques for their work situations.

The present study is an attempt to find out the research trends in India since its inception to the year 2012. For this purpose present work will try to analyze the research productivity according to chronological growth, decade-wise growth and University-wise distributions of Doctoral dissertations in the area of LIS in India for the period of 1950–2012.

Review of literature

There are few studies on research in LIS has been done in the last 15th years. An earlier studies analyzed, highlighted and pointed out the quantity output, growth pattern and popular areas of research with broad and narrow subjects. Such as Lahiri analyzes doctoral theses in LIS in India during 1957–1995, focusing on areas of research, types of work, growth patterns and productivity in Indian Universities (Kumar 1998). Dr. Kumar shows that the doctoral research in LIS carried out in India during the year 1950–1997 and found that 293 professionals were awarded doctorate, out of 264 awarded in LIS and rest 29 were awarded other than LIS and also indicate the maximum number of doctorate (48) in 1992 on that period (Satija 1998). Satija (1999) describes the beginning, growth of the doctoral research in LIS during 1950–1997 which is awarded and includes the status and quality of research in LIS in India has also been given. Satija farther describes the origin and growth of PhD programme in LIS in India and highlights the initiative and effort of S.R. Ranganathan (1892–1972) and also analyzed quantitative output of LIS PhD, ranks major universities and focus on major areas of LIS research during 1950—May, 1999. Mahapatra and Sahoo (2004) analyzed the research programmes at the PhD level in LIS carried out in India during the 7 years (1997–2003) and found out the trends and areas of research, growth pattern and productivity of universities along with broad and narrow subject area in the discipline. Patra and Chand (2006) says that the LIS research output of India is low reflect by LISA which is mostly published in Indian journal for the period of 1967–2004 and also concluded that due to the indexing and coverage limitation of LISA one of the cause. Mestri (2008) shows that 491 PhD degrees in LIS awarded by 51 universities during 1957–2007 in India. Madasamy and Alwarammal (2009) analyzed the data of doctoral degrees awarded in LIS during 2003–2008 was collected by university news that Andhrapradesh has produced the higher number of PhD (27) during the period and information sources and services (29), user studies (25), library management (24) and bibliometrics (22) are the leading subject area on which most of the research has been carried out. Chandrashekara and Ramsesh (2009) provides the quantity of research output in the form of doctoral theses, state wise, University wise, topic wise and supervisor wise. He analyzed the data based on number of 802 PhD theses in LIS in India during 1957–2008. Patra and Chand (2009) analyzed the research output in member countries of SAARC and ASEAN using LISA for the period (1967–2005) and find that India is the leading in LIS among the SAARC countries and Singapore among ASEAN countries. Satija (2010) describe the history of LIS research in India, presenting the growth of research and contribution of S.R. Ranganathan. He analyzed number of 802 PhD theses in LIS during 1957–2008. Gupta and Bhardwaj (2010) describe the history of library management research in India and trace the growth of the doctoral theses in the area of LIS Mgmt and also analyzed 167 theses topics in the broad area of library management during 1977–2010. Rana (2011) describe the research trends and the patterns of India in LIS and department of LIS, Punjab University were compare during the period of 1957–2009 and also included that in 1990, the number of PhD theses more than double (from 104 to 232). He shows that this growth in doctoral degrees were fueled by party in pay scales and promotional avenues according by the UGC to library science professionals. Sethi and Panda (2010) analyzed that 1000 research papers in the area of LIS, published in the International Information and Library Review (IILR) and Library and Information Science Research (LISR), for the period of 2000–2010 and also indicate that there is an upward trend in LIS Research productivity, especially in India and United States. Most of the paper like ICT age, digital library and information seeking behaviour respectively.

Scope

The study covers research work in LIS at the PhD level which have been already awarded for doctoral degree by Indian Universities. The period of coverage is from 1950 to 2012, a period of 63 years. It has considered only those titles of doctoral theses appeared in the University News published by Association of Indian University (AIU) and two leading databases of this kind namely Vidhyanidhi (http://vidyanidhi.org) and INFLIBNET-Indcat (http://incat.inflibnet.ac.in/indcat). Searching individual various universities randomly, it has been found that used sources not yet include few results. For example Rabindra Bharati University has been awarded three PhD degree during this period but our references show only one result. Same thing happened with many other universities like Vidyasarar University, Pune University etc. This study does not consider this minor error as these data may not affect the results drastically. The study is also considered those doctoral thesis written in English languages only.

Methodology

The main source of data collected form INFLIBNET’s Indcat database and Vidhyanidhi databases. Apart from those we have considered University News which periodically lists out the doctoral theses accepted by different Universities in India and LISA. The Vidhyanidhi (http://vidyanidhi.org) and INFLIBNET (http://incat.inflibnet.ac.in/indcat) were searched with the key term “Library” “Library science” “Library and Information science” to retrieve 1176 records and downloaded for the period of 1950–2012. All doctoral theses have been listed and checked manually. After checking 1058 records was retained for the study and rest of the data found duplicate. The whole work has been divided into two parts. The retrieved title has been grouped according to chronological growth, Decade-wise growth, and University-wise distributions in one part. The broad and narrow subject distribution also have been analysed to find the actual subject trends in other part. The data has been analyzed quantitatively using statistical charts, diagrams, tables etc.

Chronological growth

The following table gives the chronological distribution of doctorate awards to library professionals:

The above table (Table 1) shows that since 1950–1982 i.e. 30 years people of this profession did not show any interest to do the research. May be during these time opportunity was very less or it was very hard to pursue research in this area. Next 7 years (1983–1990) scenario has been little change. The number of PhD has find litter higher except 1986. May be initiation of computer in early stage had put some impetus. Next around 10 years (1991–2001) the number become little satisfactory. Approximately thirty PhD theses had been awarded per year during this decade. Library automation and computer, initiation of OPAC and new service areas may be the reason. But things have been completely remarkable since 2002. A significant number of PhD theses (69) have been awarded this year. The momentum continues till 2010. Definitely the availability and accessibility of information and sources are the reason for this significant figure. On the other hand a huge number of scholars enrolled and shows their interest to pursue research. Lots of problematic areas of this field have been identified and tried to find the solutions. Finally Internet played a biggest role to reach this highest figure.

Table 1 Year wise quantitative distribution
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Quantitative growth (decade wise)

Table 2 represents the decade wise quantitative growth of theses. It is found that the first three decades (1950–1970) are marked with a very slow progress in regard to the number of PhD degrees awarded in LIS in India. The highest numbers of theses, i.e. 537 were awarded in the period of 2000–2009, while 299 numbers of theses were awarded in the period of 1990–1999 (Fig. 1).

Table 2 Quantitative growth (decade wise)
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Fig. 1
figure 1

Decade wise growth

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The diagram shows that from 1970 to 1979 the number of PhD awarded on LIS in India has increased in a good pace. The last figure (124) shows only 2 years (2010–2012) data and the trend shows that at the end of the 2020 this figure will definitely match with the previous line.

Quantitative data according to university

The quantity of PhD thesis depends on the university’s policy, the year of establishment of the departments and the discission taken to start it’s PhD curriculam. As initially the primary objectives of the universities ware to establish the department with basic courses and gradually expands it’s various advance level course curriculam so it is quite natural that PhD program of various universities in LIS have started late. The following table (Table 3) shows a comprehensive figure of PhD awarded by various universities. The University wise complete figure has been given to annexure-1.

Table 3 University wise distribution
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The Table 3 shows that number of universities is very high i.e. 35 who have produced only one PhD. Whereas the old library departments in India who’s number is very less has produced a huge number of PhD thesis. There are two universities—University of Delhi and Andhra University produced 56 and 58 PhD Thesis respectively. The credit to produce highest number of PhD thesis on LIS in India goes to Karnataka University, one of the oldest departments of LIS in India. Surprisingly, the database shows that another one oldest department of Banaras Hindu University where Professor Ranganathan was involved directly produced only 20 PhD thesis.

The top five highest numbers of PhD thesis producers are as follows (Table 4):

Table 4 Top five university
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Research trend in LIS

The titles of total 1058 theses have been analyzed and we have found near about 1242 key words to represents those thesis titles. We have analyzed and studied those key terms and findings have been presented in the following tables.

The 1242 keywords have been categorized under seven major areas and rest of the terms which did not places any of these seven areas have been categorize as other area as shows in Table 5. Each area further divided into various related sub categories which have been shown in the subsequent tables.

Table 5 Topic under broad class
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From the above table (Table 5) and Fig. 2 it has been clear that the maximum number of research has been done in the areas of specific library follows by ICT application. There is tremendous lack of research on information analysis, consolidation and repackaging and fundamentals of information retrieval system like cataloguing, classification, indexing etc. It is also surprising that there are very less research has been done on the area of Information retrieval (Table 6).

Fig. 2
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Broad subject category

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Table 6 Research on management
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Research trend in library management

Analyzing research titles we have found the major eight categories of research which can be grouped as library management and administration. Total 108 researches have been found so far in this category.

These are financial management, human resource management, library administration, library architecture, library organization, library planning, personal management and total quality management. There are very little interest has been found on the research of basic library administration, organization and architecture. Only one research has been found till date on personal management which is very unsatisfactorily. It was found that maximum research i.e. around 75 % research in this category has been conducted basically on total quality management or library management in general.

Conclusion

The present study shows that most of the doctoral thesis has been submitted in LIS discipline in the area of the problem in specific libraries’ followers by ‘IT application’. There is tremendous lack of Ph.D thesis in the core facet area of LIS like ‘Library management’ ‘cataloguing’, ‘classification’, ‘indexing’, ‘Information analysis and consolidation’. The fundamental research of any LIS field in India is almost negligible. The reason is new generation of India LIS professional is mostly tech-survey and not getting interest of fundamental subjects of LIS. The teachers are also unable to motivate the students. It is also found that the submission rate of Ph.D. thesis is very high in few universities in India. It is due to infrastructural as well as faculty divide shown clearly in various universities. There is clean unequal distribution of teacher-student ratio, infrastructural facilities among various departments.

LIS education in India is facing a serious threat from Computer Science and Inf. Technology. Trends has been found that academic interest moves from core LIS subject to IT and computer application. The Scholarly community, departmental experts should take initiative and give a serious thought of this issue to save a discipline.