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Introduction. Many bibliometric studies of library and information science has been performed over the years, almost without exception based on research papers from Web of Science. The purpose of this paper is, using bibliometric techniques, to conceptualize library and information science according to the information use of students, instead of the information use of researchers.

Method. A citation index was constructed, containing reference data from 210 master theses, allowing for in-depth bibliometric analysis.

Analysis. Various basic bibliometric indicators were calculated in Excel and SPSS, while bibliographic coupling and cluster analysis was applied using R.

Results. The price index for the total population of documents indicates that library and information science should be considered a soft science. On the whole the result of the bibliographic coupling, revealing 32 clusters of which a large majority contained practice-focused theses using different qualitative methods as the main mode of research technique, supports this.

Conclusions. Using master theses as a data source to conceptualize library and information science bibliometrically, produces significantly different results then when traditional data sources is used. Earlier bibliometric studies have tended to downplay the amount of practice-oriented research, and thus also to underestimate the impact of researchers involved with such questions.