“General readers still generally regard footnoted, endnoted or parenthetical citations as a dispensable nuisance” (Merton, 2000). As a general reader one tends to overlook citations. However bibliometrics is the actual study of citations. Bibliometrics applies quantitative methods and results to statistical findings about books and journals. The word "bibliometrics" is the "fusion" of two words meaning the measurement of bibliographies (Sengupta, 1992). The usefulness of the methods have been studied and theorized. Theories in bibliometrics started with Lotka’s, Bradford's, and Zipf’s Laws in the 1930s (http://www.gslis.utexas.edu/~palmquis/courses/biblio.html). Applying the three laws determines "frequency" of articles to journals, author publications, and words in texts. The statistics generated are useful in showing the growth of a journal, author profiles, citation analyses and keywords; "no other method provides as comprehensive coverage of a topic in scientific communication" (von Ungern-Sternberg, 2000). Analyses are important because they chart growth and trends in various disciplines.

Of even greater interest is the merging of disciplines. "Now references and citations could move information across time and across disciplinary boundaries, unhindered by the ambiguity of terminology, geography, or ideology" (Small, 2000). Bibliometrics helps to understand the "cross-fertilization" of disciplines (Cole, 2000). Coleman's (2002) overview of interdisciplinarity traces the attempts to merge the disciplines of Library and Information Science (LIS) and Computer Science (CS). Her findings concluded, "Professional schools such as LIS need to focus even more on interdisciplinarity because of the wealth of competencies such as improved technology and social interaction skills that interdisciplinarity provides." Library schools need to prepare future librarians about the issues they will encounter in their respective fields. Issues about maintaining statistics and their effects on the library.

As a result of two years of flat budgets and increasing prices for journals, databases and books, the Library must reduce spending on information resources by approximately $1.4 million over the next two years. Some of the reduction will be accomplished by buying fewer books, but some journals must also be cancelled in order to stay within our budget (http://www.library.arizona.edu/library/teams/sst/ua_libraryexpenditures.htm).

Inflation of serials and publisher monopolies are made visible through bibliometrics. Managing statistics by studying the growth and trends in LIS is vital in sustaining the discipline. Although phenomenal costs and rates of journals are occurring there are other options. An option in scholarly communication is the creation of digital libraries and their repositories. The digital arena is available for scholars to submit their research and work. Again, the field is new and challenges are many. Just as Garfield experienced obstacles in indexing, digital libraries and repositories are facing the same hindrance. Digital libraries and repositories must find ways to track data.

Indexing digital libraries and repositories is a huge task. One option is to have researchers keep autonomous citation indexes (ACI). "An ACI system can find articles by searching the Web, monitoring mailing lists or newsgroups, or by linking directly to publishers. Once familiar with ACI systems, researchers will be able to notify the systems of new papers directly, allowing these papers to be indexed almost immediately" (Lawrence, Giles, & Bollacker, 1999). The innovation is based on a self-motivation idea for serious scholars. Scholars who want to pursue and sustain electronic publishing are the target audience. Although it would be ideal for all scholars to keep an ACI. ACI is needed because there is an overload of information on the Internet. Webmetrics is the study of such information and data being stored on web sites and web pages. "Sitations" a term coined by Cronin pertains to counting citations on web sites (2000).

The count factor is a major determent for webmetrics because the study is based on keeping track of such numbers. Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources (COUNTER) was established to find a way to keep count of online resources, namely databases and journals. "The use of online information resources has been growing exponentially and it is widely agreed by producers and purchasers of information that the use of these resources should be measured in a more consistent way" (http://www.projectcounter.org/about.html). COUNTER intends to offer librarians a way to "compare usage statistics from different vendors; make better-informed purchasing decisions; plan infrastructure more effectively."  Reports and codes of practice are initiated, reviewed and provided on the website. Many challenges are obvious in maintaining webmetrics. "Work in progress" or "site under construction" are phrases reflecting the future of webmetrics and the potential that it encompasses.

Returning to the "general reader" who may have no interest in bibliometrics or webmetrics, one can see that they participate in the cycle. General readers are information users. Even though they may not see the importance of evaluating journal articles through citation analyses their mere use of journals is evident within the scholarly communication cycle. Especially with the Internet. The Internet is widely available to most individuals who may be overwhelmed at the wealth of information by the "click of the mouse."

    Cole, J.R. (2000). A short history of the use of citations as a measure of the impact of scientific and scholarly work. In The web of knowledge: A festschrift in honor of Eugene Garfield. Medford, NJ: Information Today, Inc.

    Coleman, A. (2002). Interdisciplinarity: The road ahead for education in digital libraries. [Electronic source] D-Lib Magazine (8), 7-8. <http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july02/coleman/07coleman.html>

    COUNTER--Online Usage of Electronic Sources. <http://www.projectcounter.org/about.html>

    Davenport, E., and Cronin B. (2000). The citation network as a prototype for representing trust in virtual environments. In The web of knowledge: A festschrift in honor of Eugene Garfield. Medford, NJ: Information Today, Inc.

        Lawrence, S., Giles C. Lee, & Bollacker, K. (1999) Digital Libraries and Autonomous Citation Indexing. IEEE Computer, (32), 6, 67-71.

    Library Serials Project. <http://www.library.arizona.edu/library/teams/sst/ua_libraryexpenditures.htm>

    Merton, R.K. (2000). On the Garfield input to the sociology of science: A retrospective collage. In The web of knowledge: A festschrift in honor of Eugene Garfield. Medford, NJ: Information Today, Inc.

    Sengupta, I.N. (1992). Bibliometrics, infometrics, scientometrics and librametrics: An overview. Libri (42), 2, 75-98.

    Small, H. (2000). Charting pathways through science: Exploring Garfield’s vision of a unified index to science. In The web of knowledge: A festschrift in honor of Eugene Garfield. Medford, NJ: Information Today, Inc.

    Von Ungern-Sternberg, S. (2000). Scientific communication and bibliometrics. <http://www/abo.fi/~sungern/comm00.htm>