Bibliometric analysis of libraries and the 2030 Agenda

Abstract

The United Nations held a meeting in 2015 where the 2030 Agenda was adopted. This agenda is ambitious and aims to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals across the universe, covering economic, cultural, environmental and social development. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals target several areas of society, including libraries and information science. These institutions provide access to information and support information and digital literacy, digital inclusion, resource sharing, equitable access to knowledge, and help local governments understand and respond to the information needs of communities. This study presents the results of a bibliometric and quantitative analysis of scientific output on libraries and the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals, indexed in Scopus. The study shows how libraries contribute to the achievement of these goals through practical examples of verified cases from around the world. The research data sets were obtained within the period 2015-2024, no filters were used regarding the type of documents. Microsoft Excel, VosViewer and Bibliometrix were used for data analysis, Excel for graphs and tables, Vosviewer for network visualisation and in-depth bibliometric analysis of countries, journals and keywords, and Biblioshiny for authorship and impact. From a total of 111 publications, after reading all the abstracts, a pull of 83 documents was selected, of which 82% are articles. Despite the time spam, no publications from 2015 and 2017 were selected. A total of 38 countries around the world contributed to the study on the relationship between libraries and the 2030 Agenda, among which we can highlight Nigeria, the United States of America and South Africa. Public and academic libraries are the ones where it's possible to identify a commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals, although the concept of green libraries has been growing in recent years.