Philosophical publications published in Polish territories in the second half of the nineteenth century. A bibliometric study

Abstract

The present article is devoted to the culture of philosophical publications in Polish territories in the second half of the nineteenth century. During the period of the Partitions of Poland, philosophy was a subject under represented in the published repertoire. In the present study, an attempt was made to incorporate the approaches to research postulated by D. Nicolas and M. Ritchie, W. Pindlowa, and M. Skalska-Zlat, concerning the application of bibliometric techniques in bibliology. The source base of the study is an Excel database. The database contains 1121 bibliographic descriptions, including off prints and copies. The main sources used to collect data were „Bibliografia Filozofii Polskiej” [Bibliography of Polish Philosophy] and Elektroniczna Baza Bibliografii Estreichera [Electronical Database of Estreicher’s Bibliography]. The collected numerical data were subjected to descriptive research as well as studies involving statistical analyses. The dynamics of the changes in the volume of publications was determined using the Kruskal-Wallis test. The Ch² Pearson test was applied to study how the number of publications was affected by the following factors: the place of publication and the Partition it was in, the category of the publisher, the form of the source, and its classification. The same test was used to determine the relationships between the category of the publisher and the form of the source, as well as between the category of the publisher and the content of the document. The Mann Whitney U test was used to compare the volume of offprints and duplicates with that of classic books. The statistical analyses were conducted using the MS Excel and Statistica 12 applications (provided by Microsoft and StatSoft Inc., respectively). The application of bibliometric techniques has confirmed their relevance for the study of the history of book culture. The study has resulted in creating a model of the dissemination of philosophical content in Polish territories in the second half of the nineteenth century. The model is constituted by both dynamic and static factors. Some of these factors are also present in the studies concerning the entire spectrum of publication activity during the period of the Partitions of Poland.