Testing Library Catalog Analysis as a bibliometric indicator for research evaluation in Social Sciences and Humanities

This paper offers the results of an examination of Library Catalog Analysis, a bibliometric approach in evaluating the scientific research in Social Sciences and Humanities founded on the count of presences of monographs in online library catalogues. The test was carried out in 2015-2016 on a large number of Italian and foreign libraries, and highlighted the not homogeneous distribution of monographs in libraries. The survey demonstrated that the count of the presence of books in library holdings could not be considered a reliable indicator in research assessment. Moreover, the paper examines in depth the recent tools for the monographs search (discovery) and the Semantic Web standards for authors’ identification.