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Last updated March 2004.

Manual Guide No. 22A (1979)

Guidelines for the Shortening of Binders' Titles

The standard commercial binding cost premium for lines of lettering in excess of seven is 20 cents per line. It is therefore important that titles, inclusive of volume numbers, months, years, etc., should be confined to a maximum of seven lines. In order to minimize reader confusion, a consistent method for reducing title length based upon normal forms of citation should be used. Modern forms of citation are based upon Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, rule 6b, which states:

Enter a periodical, monographic series or a serially published bibliography, index, directory, biographical dictionary, almanac or yearbook, issued by or under the authority of a corporate body, under its title ... [underline added]

Library of Congress main entry practice is to use the issuing corporate body as main entry, which tends to extend the title length when same principle is adopted for spine titles. Application of AACR will eliminate the corporate author name from the spine (except when embodied in the title) thus, CANADA. BUREAU OF STATISTICAL REVIEW would become simply CANADIAN STATISTICAL REVIEW. In cases where titles are duplicated, some qualifying piece of information should be added, such as country of origin, thus; CANADA. DEPT. OF LABOUR. LABOUR GAZETTE and INDIA. COMMISSIONER OF LABOUR AND DIRECTOR OF EMPLOYMENT. LABOUR GAZETTE would become LABOUR GAZETTE (CANADA) and LABOUR GAZETTE (INDIA).

Acronyms or the initials of corporate authors forming part of a title should be used whenever possible thus; INTERNATIONAL MOULDERS AND ALLIED WORKERS UNION JOURNAL would become IMAWU JOURNAL. Abbreviations of common words or terms can be used where necessary, bearing in mind that spines are lettered in capitals only thus; UNIVERSITY should be abbreviated to UNIV. and no UN. The names of American states can be abbreviated by using normal Post Office zip-code forms. Familiar abbreviations such as UCLA and MIT may be used, but in other cases such as simply UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, the abbreviation UNIV. OF CA. should be used. A list of such abbreviations should be compiled to ensure consistency.

If a title consists of a generic word followed by the name of the corporate body, the title should be inverted thus; JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION would become AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION JOURNAL but a title such as JOURNAL OF APPLIED METEOROLOGY should remain. Foreign titles should be reduced only by a staff member having some facility with the particular language.

A standard serials bibliography using title entry such as ULRICH'S INTERNATIONAL PERIODICALS DIRECTORY along with its supplements BOWKER SERIALS BIBLIOGRAPHY, may be used for establishing the title entry, but only as a basis for the construction of the actual spine title.

In specifying spine lettering details other than the title, the following procedures should be used:

• Contents should be clearly identified by the spine information, using only Arabic numeration.
• If a volume includes an index covering more than the volume contains, this should be indicated thus:

   

• Months should be shown on the spine only when a volume has to be split thus:

• In cases where there is more than one volume to a year, and when a volume includes more than one calendar year, months should not be shown thus:

10	11		10	11
1970	1970	and	1970-71	1971-72

• In the case of a new series of volume numbers, "new series" should be shown thus:

• In the rare case when a volume is to be bound with some of its parts missing, the work "incomplete" should be added thus:

• If a volume includes a supplement which is not listed in the table of contents an abbreviation should be added thus:  

• If a complete supplementary volume is bound, the spine should be lettered thus:

SUPPS.		SUPP.
1-5	or	1970
1970

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