Reviews informetric, or bibliometric, distributions, including Lotka's, rank frequency distributions, Zipf functions, Mandelbrot functions, Leimkuhler functions, and Bradford's formulations. An example of the use of these techniques to analyze song texts of Thomas Dolby is given, and results are reported that show a fit with a Leimkuhler function.…

Illustrates that the Poisson-lognormal model provides good fits to a diverse set of distributions commonly studied in bibliometrics and scientometrics. Topics discussed include applications to the empirical data sets related to the laws of Lotka, Bradford, and Zipf; causal processes that could generate lognormal distributions; and implications for…