Bibliographic Control of Serial Publications

An important problem with serials is bibliographic control. What good does it do for libraries to select, acquire, record, catalog, and bind large holdings of serial publications if the contents of those serials remain a mystery to all except the few who have the opportunity to examine selected journals of continuing personal interest and have discovered some magic way of retaining the gist of the contents? Bibliographic control is the indexing and abstracting of the contents or guts of what is included in the serials. It is this control, provided by secondary publishing services, which this article will discuss. Just as there are problems with serials in general, there are some easily identifiable problems connected with their bibliographic control including: volume, overlap, costs, elements and methods, and a few other miscellaneous considerations. Some history of bibliographic control will also put the current problems in a helpful perspective. Hereafter "bibliographic control" will be designated by the term "abstracting and indexing," one of these alone, or the shorter "a & i." (I do distinguish between abstracting and indexing and believe that they are not in order of importance and difficulty.) Although a & i do provide bibliographic control, this paper will not discuss cataloging, tables of contents, back-of-the-book indexes, year-end indexes, cumulative indexes, lists of advertisers, or bibliographies. If there is to be control, there must always be indexing. Abstracting is a short cut, a convenience, and perhaps a bibliographic luxury which may be now, or is fast becoming, too rich, in light of other factors to be discussed, for library blood and for the users of libraries especially for the users of indexes who may not depend upon the library interface. Abstracting, though, provides a desirable control, and one which will continue to be advocated.published or submitted for publicatio