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Abstract
An analysis of citations randomly chosen from geoscience doctoral dissertations showed that 59.3% were classified as geology; 79.6% were serials, rather than monographs; 96.6% were written in English; 64.3% were published in the US; a period of three decades was needed to cover 90% of all citations; and the total number of different serials cited was 836. The implications of this study are that geoscience libraries need to be larger than most other science libraries in order to give the same level of service because of the high number of serials cited and the long period of time during which the publications are useful. Foreign language publications are not very important to geoscience graduate students, with the exception to of those specializing in paleontology.