Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore research trends related to small libraries in Korea over the past 20 years. By extracting abstracts from 102 papers collected, frequency analysis, centrality analysis, and topic modeling using by text-network analysis and topic modeling. As a result, in frequency analysis, ‘reading,’ ‘residents,’ ‘culture,’ ‘revitalization,’ ‘evaluation,’ ‘local government,’ ‘policies,’ and ‘community’ appeared in the order of frequency analysis. In the centrality analysis, ‘residents’ was found to be the highest in all Degree centrality, Eigenvector centrality, and Betweenness centrality. In Degree centrality and Eigenvector centrality, ‘culture,’ ‘participation,’ ‘local community,’ and ‘revitalization’ were high. Keywords with high Betweenness centrality and high scalability into subtopics include ‘residents,’ ‘reading,’ ‘program,’ ‘local government,’ and ‘policies.’ In the topic modeling, it was classified into seven topics: ‘revitalization policies,’ ‘collection development,’ ‘operation evaluation,’ ‘cultural programs and collaboration,’ and ‘the village library movement.’ The topic-specific links revealed in the topic modeling visualization were ‘reading,’ ‘education,’ ‘materials,’ and ‘collaboration.’ Based on the analysis results, future research directions were suggested. This study is significant because it provides a comprehensive overview of research trends in small libraries, clarifying the relationships between major keywords and topics by analyzing research trends in small libraries that have never been attempted before.