The purpose of this article is to find out the characteristics of the research materials used by local authors of journal articles on literature, history and philosophy as indicated by their citations. In order to obtain source items, 5,955 articles on literature, history, and philosophy published in 83 Taiwanese journals from 1990 through 1994 were sampled. From the sample, 346 articles which produced 15,261 citations were randomly selected and further analyzed. It is hoped that the results of this survey will be useful to libraries in Taiwan in providing more beneficial services to researchers in the humanities.