Mapping the Literature of Health Education: 2006-2008 (Report‪)‬

INTRODUCTION In 1997, a symposium, "Mapping the Literature of Allied Health," appeared in the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association [1]. Using citation analysis, the authors provided a quantitative description of the literature of several allied health fields. One of the articles in that volume, Schloman's "Mapping the Literature of Health Education," provided a snapshot of the health education journal literature as seen in a three-year window (1991-1993). Schloman primarily examined research articles, thus providing empirical evidence of the composition of the research literature of the field. The author's purpose was to determine the core journal literature and indexing coverage of the literature "at this time," 1991-1993. In her conclusion, she anticipated that future updates might be done that would indicate changes in these areas and might provide useful information for collection developers, health educators, and indexing vendors [2]. The purpose of this study is to provide an update to Schloman's study to obtain a current, evidence-based picture of the literature of health education to inform library practice.