Study of the research methods and data collection techniques used in library and information science

The theme of this work corresponds to the way research methods and techniques are used in the context of Library and Information Science (LIS). Its objective is to consider the state of the art with regard to methodological issues as a way of contributing to the debate on the appropriateness of considering the existence of a methodological disciplinary field. To do this the taxonomies used to categorize research methods and data collection techniques between 1925 and 2010 have been inspected. An analysis revealed that research methods have varied over time and the perception of the adequacy of the different studies is strongly related to the type of research adopted (exploratory, descriptive, correlational or explanatory). The article concludes that comparisons are useful when the same classification system is used and that librarians are increasingly sophisticated and disciplined with respect to the methodologies used.