This paper reports on the first part of a two-part quantitative analysis of volume 1-40 (1969-2008) of the "Journal of Librarianship and Information Science" (formerly the "Journal of Librarianship"). It provides an overview of the current state of LIS research journal publishing in the UK; a review of the publication and printing history of "JoL/JOLIS", and of published descriptions and evaluations of its purpose and scope; and a summary of some results of the quantitative analysis, focusing on data of the kind that may be collected by directly examining the published issues of the journal itself. These results are informative in various ways about editors, document types, authors, authors' institutions, and authors' countries. A supplementary analysis of citations to and from the journal will be reported at a later date. (Contains 16 tables and 2 figures.)