Derivative bibliographic relationships among theological works

Derivative bibliographic relationships are the primary relationships that exist among the members of a bibliographic family-the set of interrelated works where the relationships among entities express shared semantic or linguistic activity. Derivative bibliographic relationships exist between any new conception of a work and its original source (the progenitor), or its successor, or both. Discipline was a poor predictor of derivative relationships in prior studies of derivative bibliographic relationships. For the present study random samples of works were drawn from the catalogs of the Bobst Library, New York University, and the Burke Library, Union Theological Seminary, New York. Two sites were chosen to allow a test of the differences in collection development patterns between a university research library and a theological Library. Bibliographic families were compiled for each work. Results indicate: 1) derivative bibliographic relationships exist for somewhere between one-half and two-thirds of theological works in this study; 2) there is little difference in proportions of derivative bibliographic relationships or in the size of bibliographic families between the two collections; 3) there is a positive correlation between the age of the progenitor work and the size of the bibliographic family); 4) there are significant gaps in coverage of theological bibliographic families online; 5) there is some evidence of differing patterns of derivation between Judaic and Islamic literature and Christian literature; 5) forms and genres are useful in a limited way for predicting the incidence of derivative relationships in theological literature.