One hundred years of Indian LIS periodicals

Abstract

This paper briefly traces the hundred years journey of Indian LIS periodicals. In all, 186 periodicals have been found to be published since 1912, of which 63 periodicals have ceased publication and the remaining 123 are continuing. The oldest periodical entitled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Library Miscellany</i> was started in the year 1912 from Baroda and ceased after eight years, in 1920. Another periodical entitled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Granthalaya Sarvaswamu</i> that started in 1915 from Vijayawada is still continuing. It is a bilingual periodical and publishes articles both in English and Telugu. This periodical may be reckoned as the oldest Indian LIS periodical today. A few of the periodicals are indexed in well known indexing, abstracting and bibliographic databases. It is observed that most journals were from Delhi followed by West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. Nearly eighty percent periodicals are in English, while 17% are multilingual (English with one or more regional languages). The leading regional language is Bengali followed by Marathi and Hindi. It is found that 78% periodicals appear in printed form, 10% in online electronic form and 12% publications appear in both printed and electronic form. Also, 93% periodicals are found as closed access publication, while only 7% are open access. Among Indian LIS periodicals, 35% are (quarterly) and 31% (bi-annual). The proportion of monthly and annual periodicals is 9% each. Mushrooming of open access LIS periodicals has been observed since 2010. In the hundred-year period, the highest number of periodicals (35) was started in the year 2011.