This paper reviews 17 years of research in Library and Information Science
in Spain. The total production of two major Spanish periodical publications
in the field were analyzed from 1977-1994 according to productivity variab
les and thematic content, A total of 354 articles were analyzed using as a
framework the conceptual and methodological model of L&IS research proposed
by Jarvelin and Vakkari (1990), The Spanish research output seems to conce
ntrate in the areas of information retrieval, description of services, and
studies of scientific communication. However, there are differences in the
concentration of topics per journal studied. The Spanish L&IS community see
ms straddled between a professional and a research orientation. Descriptive
and discursive methods amount to 36% of the articles studied, while empiri
cal methods amount to 33% of the articles. Authorship patterns suggest a pr
evalence for individual authorship (68%) and isolated instances of publicat
ion in non-Spanish language journals indexed by Library and Information Sci
ence Abstracts (LISA).