[WEB4LIB] Seeking Web sources for Journal Abbrevia

[Christopher Handy]

On 11/17/98, Ashton, Jason wrote:

|>Dear Web4lib people,
|>
|>As a science library several of the journals to which our scientists
|>write require the references to be abbreviated. Also, many references we
|>find are in abbreviated form.
|>
|>I am seeking sources on the web for journal abbreviations. For conversion
|>either way.
|>

MARC format provides for abbreviated journal titles (based on ISO 4-1984)
to be recorded in the 210 field of the bibliographic record (also known as
the Abbreviated Keyword Title, or something like that). Some online
catalogs, including many of those available on the web via the Library of
Congress Z39.50 gateway access page
<http://lcweb.loc.gov/z3950/gateway.html>, support "tagged display" options
that will reveal these abbreviated title fields, which are otherwise not
generally shown to the user.

Off hand I know that tagged displays are available for MELVYL and LC's own
catalog, and these two systems alone should give you access to a very large
number of journal abbreviations via full title searches. I'm less certain,
however, whether the abbreviations themselves are searchable, but rather
suspect they're not.

Chris Handy
Indianapolis, IN
charta at inetdirect.net