Hi Jason,

 

We do the same thing you do. We do not include ‘the’, ‘a’ or ‘an’, or their foreign language equivalents, at the beginning of titles.

 

I think that it comes down to an instructional issue with regard to patrons that have trouble finding what they are looking for.

 

As far as best practices go, NISO TR03-1999 is the “Guidelines for Alphabetical Arrangement of Letters and Sorting of Numerals and Other Symbols,” and we use this guide whenever issue like this arise. Below I have listed a couple points from the document that outline best practices.

 

4.1 Arrangement of Headings

“Headings shall be arranged exactly as written, printed or otherwise displayed. The

arrangement of a heading among other headings should be based solely on the sequence

of numbers in arithmetical order and on the sequence of the 26 letters of the

English alphabet. See also Sections 3, 6.3, 6.4, and 7.”

 

4.1.2.1 Word-by-Word (“Nothing before something”)

“Application of the rule in section 3.1 (spaces precede all other characters) results in

what is known as word-by-word arrangement. This method is preferred, because it

keeps together headings beginning with the same word (or words). The word-by-word

method has always been used in library catalogs as well as in many indexes. Examples

are shown in Figure 2.”

 

 

 

I have also pasted here below the contents of a document I made for our reference when issues like this arise.

 

 

 

Arrangement of Titles

Word-by-word arrangement of titles as outlined in NISO TR03-1999, 4.1.2.1 is the preferred method of title arrangement.

 

General Rules:

Hierarchy of organization (NISO TR03-1999, 3.-3.1):

1.      Spaces, dashes (-) or slashes (/)

2.      Symbols (! @ # $, etc.)

                                                            3.      Numerals (0 through 9)

4.      Letters (A through Z)

 

Further Clarifications:

1.      Punctuation marks are ignored (NISO TR03-1999, 3.3).

2.      Modified letters “Should be treated like their nearest basic equivalent” (NISO TR03-1999, 3.6.1, p. 4).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3.      “Superscript and Subscript Characters are arranged as ‘on-the-line’ characters.” (NISO TR03-1999, 3.7, p.4).

4.      Local practice for the ampersand (&) is to treat it as though it was spelled out as “and”

 

I hope this helps.

 

 

Patrick Kenney

Continuing Resources Associate

Buswell Memorial Library | Wheaton College

501 College Ave. Wheaton, IL 60187-5593

patrick.kenney@wheaton.edu | 630.752.5849

 

From: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@LISTSERV.NASIG.ORG] On Behalf Of Jason Skoog
Sent: Monday, October 29, 2018 9:47 AM
To: SERIALST@LISTSERV.NASIG.ORG
Subject: [SERIALST] Words like the, of, and for in titles

 

 

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