Who cares about rural libraries? Tracking a neglected research topic in library and information science

Abstract

Rural libraries have historically received minimal attention from the academic community despite their critical role in providing access to information, education, and recreational resources in rural areas. The state of research on rural libraries was examined. Drawing on a corpus of 159 publications from the Web of Science database covering the period from 1970 to 2023, research on rural libraries remains limited in both volume and influence. The field demonstrates low interconnectivity with other disciplines, with approximately 70 % of publications appearing in Library and Information Science (LIS) journals. Additionally, the visibility of this research is low, with merely 8.6 % of articles published in top-tier journals based on their impact factor.