This study analyzes 9,131 citations from the 2002 volumes of journals in eight humanities fields: art, classics, history, linguistics, literature, music, philosophy, and religion. This study found that citation patterns varied widely among humanities disciplines. Due to these differences, it is important for librarians with humanities collection development responsibilities to consider each field separately when making collection development decisions. The authors investigated the language of sources cited in each field. Foreign language citations continue to be dominated by French and German. This study also confirms that, in most humanities disciplines, monographs remain the dominant format of cited sources, although some fields cited monographs less frequently than expected.

in order to identify trends in foreignlanguage citation behavior of humanities scholars over time.The number of foreign-language sources cited in the four subjects has not declined over time. Consistent levels of foreign-language citation from humanities scholars indicate a need for U.S. research libraries to continue to purchase foreign-language materials and to recruit catalogers and collection development specialists with foreign-language knowledge.he current study investigates whether declines in college enrollment in foreign languages are reflected in concomitant declines in the use of foreign-language sources by humanities scholars. The answer to this question has collection development implications for research libraries. With library materials budgets losing purchasing power in real terms over time, and the recent, more drastic cuts many libraries have had to make because of a difficult economic environment, it is tempting to assume that foreign books and journals receive less use and could be cut. Although this may be true for undergraduates, collecting decisions based on assumptions about lower use of foreign-language materials by scholars should be supported by data. The purpose of this study is to collect enough data over a sufficient period of time to be able to determine whether a trend of lower use of foreign-language resources has, indeed, developed.The foreign-language education community has documented a sharp decline since the 1960s in the percentage of college undergraduates studying languages, most severely in the 1980s, from a high of 16.5 per 100 students in 1965 to 7.9 in 1998. 1 Contributing to this decline was the drop in numbers of colleges with language entrance and/or graduation requirements.

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