College and Research Libraries David Riesman and the Concept of Bibliographic Citation Raymond G. Mcinnis and Dal Symes In this article, we discuss how, over time, both the concept and the function of bibliographic citation change and correspond to Riesman's three types of personal character. First in the tradition-directed period, titles come before authors, since the writer is seen as merely the instrument of authority. In the inner-directed period, a transition occurs, with the author's name coming before the title. Finally, in the present time, which corresponds to Riesman's other-directed period, the format for the bibliographic citation becomes formalized, and the concept of its function changes dramatically. Ultimately the citation becomes a symbol for both substantive content and for intellectual property. cholars generally agree that The Lonely Crowd1 has significantly influenced the way they under- stand and discuss contempo- rary society. 2 David Riesman' s observa- tions on the stages of character development in the social order can also be illuminating when applied to the devel- opment of scholarly activity as it is demon- strated in published records. Especially pertinent are how referencing and other bibliographic practices and conventions, from a historical perspective, reflect his models of tradition-, inner-, and other- directed character. To understand how the theories of Ries- man and other thinkers apply to scholarly conventions, we will develop a frame- work that first discusses the function of concept in scholarly discourse, with special attention to how, through evolution, bib- liographic citations have come to function as concepts, including how bibliographic ci- tations have taken on a symbolic function, frequently substituting for substantive content. 3 Finally, we will present evidence that demonstrates how Riesman' s theory of the historical development of human character provides a possible explanation of why our concept of the bibliographic ci- tation has developed through these per- mutations. 4 THE FUNCTION OF CONCEPTS IN SCHOLARLY DISCOURSE Concepts are the basic building blocks of knowledge. Many scholars, especially philosophers of science, have pointed out how concepts are fundamental to inquiry and explanation in all scholarly disci- plines. 5 Essentially they perceive the pur- pose of research is to produce knowledge. The results of research (findings) are pre- sented in scholarly publications as expla- nations . These explanations, in turn, or- ganize knowledge. The principles and Raymond G. Mcinnis is Social Sciences Librarian and Head of the General Reference Department and Dal Symes is Humanities Librarian at Wilson Library, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington 98225. The authors wish to acknowledge the comments of Paul Durbin, Dick Feringer, jim Inverarity, William Keith, Dan Lamer, Ron Merchart, John Richardson, and especially David Riesman. 387 388 College & Research Libraries theories that emerge from this organiza- tion of knowledge are called concepts. Specifically, says Eugene Meehan, an American sociologist, concepts identify and classify the topics we think about by placing them in specific times and places. They present definitions and perform the range of tasks that Abraham Kaplan's term organizing experience implies. 6 Without concepts, Meehan argues, "man could hardly be said to think." 7 In addition, according to British anthropolo- gist Edmund Leach, when concepts are converted into material objects, as they are when published, they attain ''relative permanence," or, to put it another way, abstract thoughts are given a concrete quality. 8 Once turned into this sort of ma- terial form, Leach claims, concepts can be subjected to technical operations other- wise beyond ''the capacity of the mind acting by itself." PRESCRIPTIVE NATURE OF MEANING AND VALIDITY OF CONCEPTS Throughout scholarly discourse, the meanings of concepts are set forth in a pre- scriptive rather than a descriptive sense. A concept has meaning only because scholars prescribe the meaning attached to it. 9 In other words, a concept's meaning is valid only if scholars in the same field agree to it having the same meaning. The American lexicographer Sidney I. Landau further singles out distinctions be- tween prescriptive and descriptive mean- ings in scholarly discourse. Landau speaks of "extracted" or "imposed" meanings. To illustrate, he distinguishes between the way words are defined in lex- ical (standard) dictionaries and the way words (as labels for concepts) are treated in subject-field (specialized) dictionaries. In lexical dictionaries, general words are defined by citations from specific texts il- lustrating how particular words are used. The particular meanings are extracted from the context in which these words are em- ployed in sentences. In subject-field dic- tionaries.., on the other hand, terms take on special meanings "imposed on the basis of expert advice," or are prescribed. 10 In The Lonely Crowd, Riesman' s concepts ~ regarding the development of human September 1988 character are excellent examples of terms with specialized imposed or prescribed meanings. As is the tradition, when a scholar's special definitions of particular terms are considered valid, other scholars attach the same meanings when they em- ploy these terms. THE SYMBOLIC FUNCTION OF THE BIBLIOGRAPHIC CITATION IN SCHOLARLY DISCOURSE In scholarship, the accepted method of identifying a published source is the bib- liographic citation. When we cite another publication in the text of our discourse, we identify the particular source by giving sufficient details needed for others to lo- cate it. John Ziman, the British physicist and popularizer of science, presents evidence that the collective nature of scientific dis- course "is made very obvious by the sys- tematic use of references or citations in sci- entific papers. " 11 In scientific (and scholarly) discourse, papers do not stand alone; they are, instead, embedded in the literature of the subject. The knowledge included also contains all relevant pre- vious studies-not just the actual works cited but also the works referred to in the cited articles as well. Arguments pre- sented and facts listed need to be docu- mented, not unlike" the precedents in En- glish Common Law. " 12 Further, Ziman argues, the "pattern" citations take has ''its own internal logic,'' which may not resemble the theoretical logic of the subject. The "historical order and connectivity" into which citations fall may not be the categories into which the field will eventually settle. A particular pa- per, for example, clever but not entirely sound, may dominate the subject for y;ears, only to be corrected; later, except in histories, it scarcely warrants mention. On the other hand, continues Ziman, re- search can long lie neglected and forgot- ten, but when discovered it becomes "a great well of knowledge.'' 13 SCHOLARSHIP AS PERSUASION If we accept this understanding about the function of bibliographic citation, a li- brary is "not primarily a quarry," or "a factory.' ' 14 Instead, we should consider it a store, a memory where, as new results from scholarly activity are transferred to it, each unit is constantly updated. Thus, says Ziman, when consulting an article in a back issue of a journal, a scientist is not seeking what an author was thinking about when the paper was published; in- stead, the scientist is looking for evidence to support his or her own research topic. Similarly, an attorney is searching the lit- erature when looking for the title deeds of a property a client is purchasing. The cita- tion of references, "which validates many of the claims that he will make, embeds it in the pre-existing consensus." The "or- derliness of this process, the intellectual structure implicit in the library, the cata- log, the encyclopedia, the treatise, give meaning to the research of the past and the motive for research in the future." ''Ziman's testimony demonstrates how scholarship is essentially per- suasion by argument, buttressed by support from authoritative papers in the field." Ziman' s testimony demonstrates how scholarship is essentially persuasion by argument, buttressed by support from au- thoritative papers in the field. This obser- vation is not unique to Ziman. In a sense, the citation is the modern equivalent of the classical rhetorical device that uses an appeal to authority to bolster one's argu- ment. Aristotle calls such a means of per- suasion atechnoi pisteis, or nonartistic or nontechnical persuasion, since the rheto- rician did not have to invent supporting arguments. 15 Others who have also ob- served how scholarship is persuasion in- clude Arthur Koestler, C. Wright Mills, Thomas Kuhn, Jerome Bruner, F. C. Bartlett, Peter McKellar, Lawrence Kubin, Abraham Kaplan, Michael Polanyi, ChaimPerelman, William T. Scott, Jerome Ravetz, and G. R. Elton. 16 Another example of persuasion comes from examining the processes involved in scholarly writing. In an empirical study of how graduate students write, David S. David Riesman and the Concept 389 Kaufer, a professor of rhetoric at Carnegie-Mellon, finds that the writing process falls into four phases: (1) summa- rize the work of other authors, (2) synthe- size their ideas to find common principles, (3) analyze the merit of their positions, and (4) contribute new views to the dis- cussion. 17 While one must admit that, to a greater or lesser degree, variations in this formula exist among scholars, the format nonetheless reflects scholarly discourse in general and is not just characteristic of stu- dent writing. We get more evidence to jus- tify this claim from the citation studies of Nigel Gilbert, Henry Small, and Blaise Cronin. REFERENCING AS PERSUASION In a succession of papers late in the 1970s, British sociologist G. Nigel Gilbert argued that referencing, such as citing a scientific paper, is really a form of persua- sion.18 A scholar with true, important results still has to persuade the scholarly community to share this opinion, for it is only when some consensus has been achieved that the research findings will be transformed into scientific knowledge. In other words, scholarly papers really con- tain "knowledge claims" staked out by authors who must wait for their claims to be certified by the scholarly community. One of the riskiest knowledge claims in- volved Galileo's insistence that the au- thorship and authority of his conceptions about the universe be recognized. This led to his famous trial by the Catholic Inquisi- tion. Ernst Cassirer, the German philoso- pher, points out that when Galileo in- sisted on publishing the ''scandalous'' On the Two Systems of the Universe, he was sug- gesting a dangerous idea: scientific schol- arship is the product of a new priesthood qualified to interpret nature as a revelation of God, comparable to the Testament rev- elation that, up to then, was the church's own preserve. Galileo' s knowledge claim, in effect, ar- gued that no authority, divine or human, can supersede the authority that comes through experiment and mathematical de- duction. From observable facts comes an image of reality ''that possesses a unique and necessary truth." When we strive to ~---------------------------------------------------------------------~ - - ~ 390 College & Research Libraries understand and explain the universe and its parts, Galileo argued, why should we "begin with the word of God?" Instead, he insisted, knowledge comes from expe- rience and can never be questioned by ar- gument from b~blical texts. 19 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CITATION CONTEXT In 1978, Henry Small, a historian of sci- ence, argued that insufficient attention is given in citation analyses to the textual content of the citation context (i.e., how a writer labels the publications cited). Be- cause of this lack of attention, citation analyses miss "the role citations play as symbols of concepts or methods.' ' 20 More- over, Small adds, citation contexts per- form cognitive functions, arising from the formal requirement imposed on the scholar to embed references to earlier liter- ature in a written text. This leads to the cit- ing of works that embody ideas the author is discussing. The cited documents be- come symbols for these ideas. In a text, Small says, The footnote number has the function of point- ing to a portion of the text in which it is embed- ded and at the same time corresponding to a specific document usually given at the bottom of the page or grouped at the end of the article. The footnote number should unambiguously point to a word, phrase, sentence, or other unit of text to show what ideas are to be connected with the cited document. 21 By referring to other sources, authors give further meaning to their own writing, and also give their sources meaning by cit- ing them. For example, continues Small, ''if I use Lowry's method of protein deter- mination and cite his paper, I am not only telling the reader where he can find a de- scription of the method, but I am stating what his paper is about, that is, a method for protein determination." When we view referencing this way, we can see it as a labeling process. The language pointed to by the footnote number characterizes the documents cited-or constitutes the author's interpretation of the cited work. In citing a document, an author, there- fore, creates its meaning. According to Small, viewing ''citations as concept symbols is a more direct inter- September 1988 pretation of citation practice than previous 'classification' attempts." Small quotes Eugene Garfield: ''A cited document is analogous to a subject heading in an in- dexing system.'' Studying the citation context of highly cited documents is a method of observing the transformation of scholars' work into knowledge. BIBLIOGRAPHIC CITATIONS AS FOOTPRINTS We are indebted to Blaise Cronin, a Brit- ish librarian, for analyzing the scattered literature about citation practice. "Meta- phorically," Cronin argues, "citations are frozen footprints in the landscape of scholarly achievement" and "bear wit- ness to the passage of ideas.' ' 22 With foot- prints, we can deduce direction "from the configuration and depth of the imprint." Ideally, we can also construct a picture of those who have passed by, and the distri- bution and variety furnish clues as to whether the advance was orderly and pur- posive. Citations give substantive expres- sion to the process of innovation, and, if properly marshaled, provide scholars "with a forensic tool of seductive power and versatility.'' In scholarly discourse, then, when we cite another work we are substituting the citation for the concepts the work con- tains.23 Citing the book is a device for tell- ing readers that you are discussing one or more of the book's concepts. To illustrate, let's look at The Lonely Crowd, the source of at least three major concepts; as we shall see below, such citation practice is a mir- ror image of certain characteristics Ries- man attributes to his notion of the other- directed character. THE LONELY CROWD When David Riesman, a sociologist at Harvard University, published The Lonely Crowd in 1950, he argued that historically in Western civilization the majority of per- sons have evolved through three types of individual character: the tradition- directed, the inner-directed, and the other-directed. Riesman defines character as those components of our behavior and belief systems that organize our drives and satisfactions. Tradition-directed individuals behave according to norms expected of the age in which they live, of their family, of their be- liefs, of their social customs. When tradition-directed, we conform to slowly changing behavior practices passed from generation to generation. In Riesman' s view, tradition-directed societies mainly existed before the Renaissance, or, if they exist today, they are labeled under- developed. As the Renaissance unfolded, examples of the inner-directed individual appeared. Early in this individual's life a set of fixed goals-success, piety, self-control- becomes part of an internalized code of conduct. These characteristics are passed on to us by parents and other authorities. ''The inner-directed social order pro- duced people equipped witJl an inner psy- chological gyroscope that would carry them through all sorts of new situations,'' Joseph Featherstone argues, "men and women of unbending principle," where "the ideals of 'work,' 'success,' 'indepen- dence,' 'manliness,' 'character,' focus on patterns of drives and strivings. " 24 In Riesman' s view, the inner-directed char- acter came into full flower in the nine- teenth century. The other-directed individual, charac- teristic of American society, appeared in the mid-twentieth century. Production, a significant feature of the social order of the inner-directed person, became secondary to consumption, a feature of the social or- der of the other-directed person. As other- directed individuals, we respond to sig- nals emerging from a circle far wider than just our parents. Guidance comes from peers and contemporaries, personal and professional associations, and the mass media. Conformity, in effect, is external- ized. The other-directed character '' sig- nals a broad shift from nature to society, from competition to cooperation.' ' 25•26 THE BIBLIOGRAPHIC CITATION IN THE TRADITION-DIRECTED PERIOD Recognition of the author's name as the primary means of identifying publications occurred slowly. The Western concept of author entry came from the Greeks. In the David Riesman and the Concept 391 ''Recognition of the author's name as the primary means of identifying publications occurred slowly.'' non-Western world and also in the medi- eval world of Christian Europe, the title identified a book, not the author. This tra- dition developed out of the notion of the supremacy of a deity, in which an author is important only as an instrument of a publication, and not as an individual. Similar to art and architecture, a book was considered to come from God and the au- thor was only a conduit for God's word. Mirroring this belief, bibliographies put a work's title before the author's name, or even ignored it just as the creators of works of art were ignored. Ruth Strout, a cataloging authority, points out that even today in the East the traditional entry for a book is its title. Whenever, under the in- fluence of modern Western librarianship, a book in an Asian library is entered under author-a tradition that ''rests upon belief in the importance of the individual" -it is considered very progressive and Western, or democratic. 27 Such practices provide evidence of the tradition-directed social order David Ries- man presents in The Lonely Crowd. THE BIBLIOGRAPHIC CITATION IN THE INNER-DIRECTED PERIOD The first bibliography to list books by author is attributed to Johannes Trithe- mius in the fifteenth century. 28 Surnames as entry words, instead of forenames, were introduced by Konrad Gesner in 1545. But, says Johannes Dewton, only in the eighteenth century did the ''surname as entry word become generally ac- cepted." According to Alice Mona East, the prac- tice of citing authorities, with reference to the exact place a text is cited, developed only after the invention of printing with moveable type. 29 (Before, the pages on which specific texts appeared varied too much to be referred to with any assur- ance.) East examined the citation practices ~------------------------------------------------------------------------ - - 392 College & Research Libraries of more than fifty works published in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. She investigated ''the use of citations to books as evidence, as authority for a statement, rather than on their use as sources or as decoration in literature.'' Investigation found citations used-as suggested by classical rhetoricians-as evidence to per- suade by authority rather than for sources of authority or for pretentious decoration. "Probably because books became more generally known," she argues, "the feel- ing that a piece of writing belonged in some sense to its author gradually devel- oped." Here, again, the evidence con- firms Riesman's theory of the historical emergence of the inner-directed individ- ual as it is manifested in scholarship. The transition from one citation practice to the other was lengthy. East states that only with the advent of the eighteenth century did the published records of scholarship begin to approach the modem standard of citation. 30 When they discovered the value of di- rect observation of phenomena-and hav- ing few predecessors to refer to-the early scientists wrote "fairly straight-forward descriptions of the methods and results of the experiment undertaken, with an occa- sional reference to the classics or the Bible as a sort of decoration.' ' 31 But, claims East, in the period of her study, few publica- tions cited other scientific works. Instead, "the earliest true citations ap- pear in works of religion, where the ap- peal to authority is natural, and in books of controversy, where it is necessary for clarity.' ' 32 Biographies and historical works, in which writers must use other sources, included citations, and these cita- tions came at an earlier date than those in books of medicine or other practical arts, where the work was produced from the writer's own knowledge. Scientific works, which appeared from about the middle of the seventeenth century, con- fined themselves to reports of the immedi- ate investigation. Between 1700 and 1750, all scholarly writers except experimental scientists used citations that, although they did not reach the modern standard in form (the chief deficiency being the persistent use of September 1988 abbreviated titles), they did make clear what sources were being cited. Derek J. de Solla Price notes that the transformation of the scientific paper into its modern form occurred in the 1860s. "As late as 1900, some of the respected journals contain not one scientific paper of the present vari- ety." But, claims Price, a historian of sci- ence, distinctions can be made about "the mode of cumulation of the papers," each of which, in turn, ''is one of several points of departure for the next." Our most tell- ing ''manifestation of this scholarly brick- laying is the citation of references." 33 This evidence gives us, in very broad brush strokes, the outlines of features of other- directedness: (1) greater social cohesive- ness and scholarly rigor among individ- uals working in the same areas; (2) the use of agreed-upon procedures, cooperatively producing increasingly larger bodies of knowledge; and (3) a responsiveness and loyalty beyond the boundaries of univer- sity to a national or even international community. THE BIBLIOGRAPHIC CITATION IN THE OTHER-DIRECTED PERIOD In the 1940s, dramatic changes in our concept of bibliographic citation began to occur. In separate articles, two librarians presented new interpretations of the func- tions of bibliographic citation. According to both J. F. Fulton34 and William Postell, 35 bibliographic citations serve two basic functions: (1) to identify the source of a given statement and (2) to describe ''the nature and scope of the printed document in which the statement is found." But, says Fulton, citations are also ''an integral part of the scientific evidence of a paper." Thus if "writers quote from the literature without giving readers any op- portunity of verifying statements, impor- tant elements in the chain of logic are omitted.' ' 36 Such practices cast suspicion about the author's credibility. To Postell, ''the purpose of bibliographic citation is to give authority for every statement of fact quoted." A citation, then, is an integral part of the logic of the discipline's rheto- ric. A bibliographic citation is a "link in the chain of evidence'' associated with a topic. 37 Thus, for the first time, the notion of citation is articulated as an integral part of scholarship. Like Riesman's definition of other-directedness, it must also out- wardly conform to the established format of the particular discipline in which the scholar writes. Further, both Fulton and Postell's arguments about the function of bibliographic citations as 11 evidence" in scholarship in the 1940s are harbingers of significant new insights about the concept of the bibliographic citation that occurred in the 1950s. THE BIBLIOGRAPHIC CITATION AS SUBJECT HEADING When he presented his concept of cita- tion indexes in 1955, Eugene Garfield in- troduced the notion of bibliographic cita- tion as subject heading. A major breakthrough, this concept is the first of two in the decade that changed our view of the function of bibliographic citations in scholarly discourse. Subtitled II A New Di- mension in Documentation through Asso- ciation of Ideas," his article argues that II the utility of a citation index in any field must also be considered from the point of view of the transmission of ideas. " 38 "The concept of bibliographic cita- tion as subject heading indicates an increasing prevalence of agreed- upon norms of scholarship.'' The concept of bibliographic citation as subject heading indicated an increasing prevalence of agreed-upon norms of scholarship. These, in turn, produced in the minds of scholars working in similar fields the idea that (1) they shared similar methods and concepts, and (2) compo- nents of their knowledge could be speci- fied by citing the publications that were re- sponsible for contributing to this knowledge. When cited, these discrete knowledge components function as sub- ject headings. When the language of such discourse takes on prescribed meanings of a specific discipline, we see further evi- dence of Riesman' s other-directed charac- David Riesman and the Concept 393 teristics becoming manifest in that area of scholarship. As a means of identifying or otherwise specifying a research topic, Garfield finds that the bibliographic citation possesses greater power than the arbitrarily as- signed subject heading. He says, in effect, that bibliographic citation is a more pre- cise way of identifying a concept con- tained by a specific publication than is a subject heading arbitrarily added by an- other party. A bibliographic citation, in other words, can substitute for a subject heading. A decade later Garfield again argued that we have to recognize the underlying conceP-t symbolized by a bibliographic ci- tation. 39 As librarians, he says, our tradi- tional concept of a subject is so ingrained that we fail to realize that a word is merely a symbol for a concept. To demonstrate his point, Garfield cites an analogy from chemistry. Chemists, he claims, fall into the same trap and often forget that a chemical formula is only symbolic of the real thing. As an example of the difficulties in cor- relating complex concepts with arbitrarily assigned word-structured indexing lan- guages, Garfield argues, consider the con- cept protein determination of the Folin phenol reagent, or the Lowry method. 40 First published in 1951 the paper is the most frequently cited work in the 1967literature. No term exists for it in the (thesaurus) of Index Medicus. The symbol: Lo- wry, 1951, ]BCv 193, p. 265 also identifies its ex- act address! Unquestionably, Index Medicus does provide for indexing papers on protein de- termination methods, but that is a vastly more generic concept than the Lowry method, or der- ivates thereof. THE BIBLIOGRAPHIC CITATION AS LABEL FOR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY In 1957, sociologist Robert Merton intro- duced the notion of the bibliographic cita- tion as the symbol for intellectual prop- erty, a theme that, with variations, was later developed by other writers. 41 As the decade's second major breakthrough in shaping our understanding of the func- tion of bibliographic citations, this concept 394 College & Research Libraries contributes significantly to arguments in our discussion. In our opinion, the view of bibliographic citation as subject heading and intellectual property connects to the other-directed in- dividual, the third and final of Riesman' s three kinds of character. Scholarship, to- day, is a collective enterprise, which im- plies that knowledge is socially con- structed. The production of knowledge under these conditions means that partici- pants in specific areas of scholarship nec- essarily follow certain agreed-upon pat- terns of behavior and share a common set of values. These behaviors and values are usually learned from peers by apprentice- ship. While scholarship is a collective en- terprise, which means other-directedness in individual contributions conforming to a set of norms, the ownership of these contributions is vested in individuals whose property is maintained through a system of citations. And, following Leach, Small, Gilbert, and Garfield, citations be- come shorthand referents for abstract ma- terial. They acquire a form that allows us to manipulate them more easily without losing meaning. 'ORIGINALITY' IN SCHOLARSHIP Inner-direction and other-direction are, of course, both modes of conformity, with the main distinction being conforming to. Inner-directed people, in Hartshorne's view, just ''seem more individualistic than the other-directed person.'' Why? Be- cause "the pressures to which he con- formed are less obvious.'' This individual conforms to such inner-directed stan- dards as those dictated by family practices or beliefs, or social norms prevailing at the time. Under inner direction, an individual ''has no more rational freedom of choice than the other-directed person.'' The indi- vidual himself ''is likely to be following his own self-determined course, but Ries- man himself insists that this is a delu- sion.''42 With the inner-directed character, cooperation is limited because competi- tion is more important. Communication takes place only with the intimate group, and the final product is perceived as a unique contribution. This kind of activity, September 1988 it is true, still prevails in the research and development departments of large manu- facturing firms. In scholarly communities, people con- form to certain standards and procedures based on an understanding that this con- formity is less confining than inner- directedness. While conformity exists, it exists in order to enhance cooperation and communication among a national, or even international, community, rather than to respond mainly to the expectations of one's local peer group. 43 (We acknowl- edge, of course, that scholarly activity has its darker side, including excessive se- crecy, deliberate distribution of incorrect data, and referees acting as ''gatekeep- ers." As an example, we need only cite Watson's The Double Helix. )44 A scholar's role is to advance scholar- ship, and, in this context, originality is at a premium. Recognition for originality is in- dicated through the citation of one's pub- lications. With such citation, one estab- lishes property rights. Merton writes about scientific scholarship, but others ar- gue similar practices prevail throughout scholarship. 45 Critics generally credit Nor- man Kaplan, for example, for bringing into focus scattered commentary about the social function of citation practices in scholarship, with special concern for the nature of intellectual property. 46 In Merton's view, such recognition can be seen in the language employed by sci- entists in speaking of their work: 47 Ramsay, for example, asks Rayleigh's "permis- sion to look into atmospheric nitrogen" on which Rayleigh has been working; the young Clerk Maxwell writes William Thomson, "I do not know the game laws and patent laws of sci- ence . . . but I certainly intend to poach among your electrical images"; Norbert Weiner de- scribes "differential space, the space of Brow- nian motion" as "wholly mine in its purely mathematical aspects, whereas I was only a junior partner in the theory of Banach spaces.'' Other evidence confirming this notion as it relates to scientific fields (and which we believe, to a greater or lesser degree, applies in scholarship in general) comes from Pierre Bourdieu. Through Bour- dieu' s lens, scientific activity is cast in a competition model. Bourdieu, a French sociologist, argues that scientific activities are ''directed towards the acquisition of scientific authority. ''48 The struggle for authority is about scien- tific property rights. To achieve authority in a scientific field means that recognition for this authority must be extracted from one's competitors, that is, only other sci- entists working in the same field have ''the means of symbolically appropriating (one's) work and assessing its merits.'' At stake here, Bourdieu continues, is ''in fact the power to impose the defini- tions of science best united to legitimize the assumption of an ascendant position in the hierarchy of scientific values. " 49 Ap- propriating scientific authority means ap- propriating scientific property rights. And, as we agreed above, the labels for these property rights are bibliographic ci- tations. In effect, scientific authority is "a particular kind of capital which can be ac- cumulated, transmitted, and even recon- verted into other kinds of capital under certain conditions. ''50 In the scholarly world, one cannot bor- row, trespass, poach, steal, or otherwise claim a concept belonging to another with- out giving due credit where, because of property rights, credit is due. In short, MPrton concludes, property rights in scholarship can be reduced to just one is- sue: ''the recognition by others of the scholar's distinctive part in having brought the result into being. " 51 With such evidence, we can conclude that in what Riesman labels an other-directed social order, where con- formity is externalized, scholars, through bibliographic citations, are able to main- tain individual property rights to their in- tellectual creation. 52 "In what Riesman labels an other- directed social order, where confor- mity is externalized, scholars, through bibliographic citations, are able to maintain individual property rights to their intellectual creation. 11 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION Historically, concepts symbolized David Riesman and the Concept 395 through bibliographic citation correlate with the three models of individual char- acter Riesman develops in The Lonely Crowd. Today, in scholarly discourse, bib- liographic citations are, as concept sym- bols, recognized as integral to the produc- tion of knowledge. Concepts are essential components of scholarly discourse. Socially constructed, they are the principles and theories result- ing from scholarly activity. Concepts are the building blocks of knowledge. The meanings given concepts are pre- scriptive, not descriptive. In seeking to understand and explain the subject matter of their inquiry, scholars impose special meaning on certain terms. If these special meanings are considered valid, the mean- ings achieve a sort of concrete quality, conveniently allowing us to discuss them with others in the field. As examples of imposed meanings, Riesman' s three major concepts in The Lonely Crowd are examined. Reisman char- acterizes the individual in the social order according to an understanding of personal behavior in the three major epochs of Western civilization. In the first epoch, in- dividuals were tradition-directed, with behavior influenced by authority figures. In the second epoch, individuals tended to be more inner-directed, relying more on guidance from parents and other family members. In the third epoch, which began in the middle of the twentieth century, in- dividuals were more other-directed. When other-directed, values and other determinants of our behavior come from groups outside our immediate circle. A function of bibliographic citations in scholarly discourse is to symbolize or oth- erwise represent concepts, methods, or other features from a given work. That is, if a writer wishes to incorporate some- thing from another work, it must be cited. By citing other works, writers transmit the cited material rapidly and efficiently. Bib- liographic citations also perform cognitive functions: for example, to persuade read- ers about the validity of a thesis, a writer embeds the text with references from works supporting this reasoning. By be- ing cited these documents become sym- bols for these views. According to Small, 396 College & Research Libraries two results are achieved: (1) by citing the works of others, writers give additional meaning to their own writing, and (2) by citing other works, authors enhance the importance of these cited works. Biblio- graphic citations may then function both as subject headings (Garfield) and as la- bels for intellectual property (Merton). Finally, by citing other works, authors create, in Cronin's words, "footprints in the landscape of scholarly achievement.'' This practice allows others to trace the path of scholarship either backward or for- ward, determine what progress has been achieved in a given area of inquiry, and possibly predict potential future develop- ments. Loyalty is no longer primarily to one's department or university. Instead, loyalty is transferred to the scholarly community to which one belongs. Part of this loyalty requires following rigorous standards in the conduct of scholarly inquiry, includ- ing the format for citing bibliographic ref- erences. Along with agreed-upon con- cepts and procedures, these standards, in turn, are part of the system for transmit- ting knowledge. In the Western world, throughout the period covered by written records, the concept of the function of bibliographic ci- tations corresponds with Riesman' s three types of personal character: First, in the tradition-directed period, direction comes from figures of suprem- acy; ordinary people, including writers, September 1988 are said to be merely the instruments of authority. In these conditions, in bibliog- raphies, the titles of published works come before the names of authors. Second, in the inner-directed period, which began roughly when printing with moveable type was introduced, a distinct change in bibliographic format occurred: in bibliographies, authors' names were listed first, indicating that a work be- longed to the writer. Third, in the other-directed period, the format of the bibliographic citation be- came more formalized and the concept of its function changed dramatically. 53 In the social order of the other-directed period, although they operate independently, people are said to conform to standards emanating from the group to which they give their loyalty. However, as much as people are said to conform to particular patterns of behavior in this other-directed period, procedures are needed to define specifically what con- tributions these individuals are responsi- ble for. To Merton, these practices indicate originality in scholarship. Citation con- texts specify these contributions with con- siderable precision. And to borrow an idea from another work without proper ac- knowledgment is to plagiarize. Such con- ventions and beliefs justify the notion that, in the other-directed period, the bib- liographic citation is a label for intellectual property. REFERENCES AND NOTES 1. David Riesman, Renel Denny, and Nathan Glazer, The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing Amer- ican Character (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Pr., 1950). 2. Leon Botstein, "The Children of the Lonely Crowd," Change 10:16 (May 1978); Eric Larrabee, "David Riesman and His Readers" in Culture and Social Character: The Work of David Riesman Re- viewed, ed. Seymour M. Lipset and Leo Lowenthal (Glencoe, ill.: Free Pr., 1961), p.404-16; Thomas Harthshome, The Distorted Image: Changing Conceptions of the American Character since Turner (Cleveland, Ohio: Case Western Univ. Pr., 1968), p.173; Peter Rose, "David Riesman Re- considered," Society 19:57 (Mar./Apr. 1982); Richard H. Pells, The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age: American Intellectuals in the 1940s and 1950 (New York: Harper, 1985), p.238-48; Jonathan Yardley, "Reconsiderations: The Lonely Crowd," New Republic 166:29 (Mar. 4, 1972). 3. We acknowledge that in scholarly discourse differences of opinion prevail among scholars about the necessity and/ or utility of authors citing the works of others. These views represent a minority, however, and-regardless of whatever merit these views are said to have-are not considered in this discussion. In addition, much good scholarly writing does not formally cite the work of others. In these cases, regardless of the lack of explicit, formal citations, it can be demonstrated that such writing implicitly incorporates the work of others. Finally, we acknowledge that both the motives David Riesman and the Concept 397 for citation and the broad range of types of citations are not addressed. For discussion of these matters, see Blaise Cronin, The Citation Process (London: Taylor Graham, 1984). 4. In this discussion, bibliographic citation means the printed record that identifies a publication, whether in footnotes, bibliographies, library card catalogs, or computerized databases. For publi- cations for which an individual author is identifiable as the originator of the material (that is, peri- odical article, chapters in books, or entire books), the bibliographic citation includes such details as author, title of article or book, periodical title or book publisher, date of publication, and of course any other information necessary to indicate a publication's uniqueness. 5. Eugene J. Meehan, Explanation in Social Science, A System Paradigm (Homewood, ill.: Dorsey Pr., 1968); Edward N . Saveth, American History and the Social Sciences (Glencoe, ll . Free Pr., 1964), p.5; Robert Berkhofer, A Behavioral Approach to Historical Analysis (New York: Free Pr., 1969), p.271. 6. Meehan, Explanation in Social Science, p .35. 7. Ibid. 8. Edmund Leach, Culture and Communication: The Logic by Which Symbols Are Connected (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1976), p.37. 9. Abraham Kaplan, The Conduct of Inquiry (Scranton, Pa.: Chandler Pub., 1964), p.46. 10. Sidney I. Landau, Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography (New York: Scribner, 1984), p.20 . 11 . John Ziman, Public Knowledge (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1968), p.58. 12. Ziman, Public Knowledge, p.158. 13. Ibid., p.59-60. 14. Ibid., p.103-4; Charles B. Osburn, Academic Research and Library Resources (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Pr., 1979), p.49; Stephen Stoan, "Research and Library Skills: An Analysis and Inter- pretation, College & Research Libraries 45:100 (Mar. 1984). 15 . EdwardP . J. Corbett, ClassicalRhetoricfortheModernStudent, 2ded. (New York: Oxford Univ. Pr ., 1971), p .33-34. 16. Raymond G. Mcinnis, New Perspectives for Reference Work in Academic Libraries (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Pr., 1978), p.83-86. 17. David S. Kaufer, The Architecture of Argument (New York: HBJ, 1988), as cited in New York Times 136: C1 (Apr. 7, 1987). We get more insight about scholarship as persuasion from the current in- crease in interest in the study of rhetoric, especially as it is said to apply in the conventions em- ployed by scholars working in "interpretive communities," that is, the networks of scholars drawn together because of similar research interests. In 1987 the University of Wisconsin Press published the results of the 1984 University of Iowa Humanities Symposium on the Rhetoric of the Human Sciences . Edited by JohnS. Nelson, Alan Megill and Donald N. McCloskey, this volume surveys rhetorical conventions employed in a number of disciplines, but primarily the social sci- ences. In chapter one, to set the theme for the volume, the editors declare that "Scholarship uses argument, and argument uses rhetoric. The 'rhetoric' is not mere ornament or manipulation or trickery. It is rhetoric in the ancient sense of persuasive discourse. In matters of mathematical proof to literary criticism, scholars write rhetorically." (JohnS. Nelson and others, "Rhetoric of Inquiry," in The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences: Language and Argument in Scholarship and Public Af- fairs , ed. JohnS. Nelson and others [Madison, Wise.: Univ. of Wisconsin Pr., 1987], p.3.) Other titles that explore these same themes include : Richard A Cherwitz and James W. Hikins, Communi- cation and Knowledge: An Investigation in Rhetorical Epistemology (Columbia, S.C.: Univ . of South Carolina Pr ., 1986) and Winifred Bryan Horner, ed., The Present State in Historical and Contemporary Rhetoric (Columbia, Mo .: Univ. ofMissouriPr., 1983). As an issue, scholarship as persuasion is of course of major concern to academic libraries, especially as it relates to at least two matters of na- tional significance in academe today associated with student learning: the "writing-across-the- curriculum'' movement and with teaching ''critical thinking'' skills . 18. G. Nigel Gilbert, "The Transformation of Research Findings into Scientific Knowledge," Social Studies of Science 6:281 (1976); , "Referencing as Persuasion," Social Studies of Science 7:115 (1977). 19. Ernst Cassirer, "Galileo: A New Science and a New Spirit," American Scholar 12:5-19 (Winter 1942); but also see Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe, V.2 (Cambridge, Eng. : Cambridge Univ . Pr., 1979), p.698. 20. Henry Small, "Cited Documents as Concept Symbols," Social Studies of Science 3:328 (1978). See also his "Citation Context Analysis," Progress in Communication Sciences 3: 287-310 (1982). 21. Small, "Cited Documents as Concept Symbols," p.328. 22. Blaise Cronin, ''The Need for a Theory of Citing,'' Journal of Documentation 37:16 (1981); ___ _ Citation Process, p.25 . .._ ______________________________________________ _ 398 College & Research Libraries September 1988 23. In this context, concept is not used according to its abstract or theoretical formulation. Instead, following Small, "Cited Documents as Concept Symbols," p.329, concept includes "experimen- tal findings, methodologies, types of data, metaphysical notions, theoretical statements or equations-or, in general when dealing with citations, any statement which may be taken as char- acterizing or describing the cited document." 24. Joseph Featherstone, "John Dewey and David Riseman: From the Lost Individual to the Lonely Crowd," in On the Making of Americans: Essays in Honor of David Riseman, ed. Herbert J. Gans and others (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Pr., 1979), p.17-18. 25. Ibid., p.18. 26. Below we'll see that the other-directed character is very appropriate for understanding how indi- viduals operate in scholarly communities. 27. Ruth Strout, "The Development of the Catalog and Cataloging Codes," Library Quarterly 26:257 (1956); Johannes L. Dewton, "The Influence of the Structure of the Catalog on the Form of Catalog Entry," Festschrift Josef Stummvoll ... , 1970, p.489; llse Bry, "The Emerging Field of Sociobiblio- graphy: Reassessment and Reorientation of Access to Knowledge in the Social Sciences," in Ac- cess to the Literature of the Social Sciences and Humanities: Proceedings, New York, 1972 (Flushing, N.Y.: Queens College Pr., 1974), p.14. 28. Strout, "Development of the Catalog and Cataloging"; Dewton, "The Influence of the Structure ofthe Catalog." 29. Alice Mona East, Bibliographical Citation in English Books in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Unpublished thesis, Univ. of Michigan, Dept. of Library Science, 1952), p.1-2. 30. Ibid., p.3. 31. Ibid., p.43. 32. Ibid., p.71. 33. lbid.,p.72; DerekJ. de SollaPrice, Little Science, Big Science (New York: Columbia Univ. Pr., 1963), p.64-65. Price places the date at the middle of the eighteenth century. See also Norman Kaplan, "Norms of Citation Behavior," American Documentation 16:180 Ouly 1965). 34. John F. Fulton, "The Principles of Bibliographical Citation," College & Research Libraries 6:185 (1945); Cyril C. Barnard, "Bibliographical Citation," The Librarian and the Book World 39:105 (1950). 35. William Postell, "Clarifying Bibliographical Citation," College & Research Libraries 6:249 (1945). 36. Fulton, "Principles of Bibliographical Citation," p.185. 37. Postell, "Clarifying Bibliographical Citation," p.249. 38. Eugene Garfield, "Citation Indexes for Science," Science 122: 109-10 (1955). 39. Eugene Garfield, "Citation Indexing and the Sociology of Science," International Congress of Medi- cal Librarianship, 3d, Amsterdam, Proceedings (Amsterdam: Excerpta Medica, 1%9), p.189. 40. Garfield, "Citation Indexing and the Sociology of Science," p.192. 41. Robert K. Merton, "Priorities in Scientific Discovery: A Chapter in the Sociology of Science," American Sociological Review 22:639 (Dec. 1957); Kaplan, "Norms of Citation Behavior"; Derek J. de Solla Price, "Networks of Scientific Papers," Science 149:510 (1%5); Ziman, Public Knowledge p.158; Jerome R. Ravetz, Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems, (New York: Oxford Univ. Pr., 1973), p.256-57. 42. Hartshorne, Distorted Image, p.177. 43. Osburn, Academic Research and Library Resources, p.xvii. 44. James D. Watson, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA (New York: Atheneum, 1968). 45. For a thorough discussion of the literature of citation practices, see Cronin, The Citation Process. 46. Kaplan, "Norms of Citation Behavior." 47. Merton, "Priorities in Scientific Discovery," p.640. 48. Pierre Bourdieu, "The Specificity of the Scientific Field and the Social Conditions of the Progress of Reason," Social Science Information 14:21 (1975). Emphasis added. 49. Ibid., p.23. 50. Ibid., p.25. 51. Merton, "Priorities in Scientific Discovery," p.640. 52. Harriet A. Zuckerman has studied the patterns of name ordering in the citation of multiauthored scientific papers. Her evidence suggests that, contrary to what one might assume, current practice does not dictate that first place in the order of names goes the most prominent investigator. In- stead she finds that ''a name's visibility in a series depends first on its relative visibility, defined by its ranks in the series and, secondly, on its intrinsic visibility," which it owes to the fact that being familiar, the practice of "[abandoning] first place to others increases as the capital possessed in- creases, and with it the symbolic profit automatically accruing to its possessor, regardless of his i David Riesman and the Concept 399 place in the order." Harriet A Zuckerman, "Patterns of Name Ordering among Authors of Scien- tific Papers: A Study of Social Symbolism and Its Ambiguity,'' American Journal of Sociology, 74: 276-291 (Nov. 1968}, as cited by Bourdieu, "Specificity of the Scientific Field," p.26 . 53. Merton, "Priorities in Scientific Discovery," p.640. IN FORTHCOMING ISSUES OF COLLEGE & RESEARCH LIBRARIES Tomorrow's Research Library: Vigor or Rigor Mortis? by Richard D. Hacken A Current Awareness Service for Faculty and Staff: The Stout Experience ) by John J. Jax and Van C. Houlson --~ Subject Searching in an Online Catalog with Authority Control by Noelle Van Pulis and Lorene E. Ludy Bibliographic Verification for Interlibrary Loan: How Necessary Is It? by JoAnn Bell and Susan Speer Measuring Collections Use at Virginia Tech by Paul Metz and Charles Litchfield Instructional Design: Increasing the Effectiveness of Bibliographic Instruction by Marian I. Miller and Barry D. Bratton More Benefits of Automation by Malcom Getz