James Weinheimer wrote:
A question:
When a serial has title changes A to B to C to D (D is the latest
title) and a library has only A and B, what does a library do now?
Firstly, bear in mind that of course we also have split entries, so if
there is a major change, a new record will be created.
I was only talking about minor title changes, e.g. from "Deutsche
Nationalbibliographie" (German national bibliography) with "ph" to
"Deutsche Nationalbibliografie" with "f" (which is the more modern
spelling variant in German). In cases such as this, the local catalogue
would still show the latest variant ("f") in the main body, even if the
library in question in fact does only own issues with the "ph" spelling.
The "ph"-variant would only be shown in a note (e.g.: "Proper title
until 2002: Deutsche Nationalbibliographie"). And, of course, the
"ph"-variant is also indexed in the OPACs. Therefore, a user searching
for the older title variant will also retrieve the record.
I'm not a serials specialist myself, but I don't think this causes any
problems for users or librarians: After all, the OPAC doesn't give an
incorrect bibliographical information (it is true that the title is now
spelled with "f", even if the library has stopped acquiring the serial).
Actually, I think it's much more confusing the other way round: Somebody
looks for the current title of a serial and is then perhaps presented
with a rather old-fashioned looking variant.
Heidrun
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Prof. Heidrun Wiesenmueller M.A.
Stuttgart Media University
Faculty of Information and Communication
Wolframstr. 32, 70191 Stuttgart, Germany
www.hdm-stuttgart.de/bi
