Elizabeth,

I feel your pain.  I always search for reasons not to make a title change
if at all possible.

You don't mention what the chief source of information is in the
publication you're working on.  If the title comes from the cover instead
of a title page, and if the title "Biennial report of the ... " appears
somewhere else on the publication for the period 1935/37-1943/45, you might
be able to use the following exception from CCM to avoid making a title change:

----------
CCM 16.2.5.b
When a serial does not have a title page, select a title page substitute
according to AACR2 12.0B2.  When working retrospectively, if it is evident
from multiple issues that one source (e.g., the caption) has a stable title
and that the title on a more preferred source (e.g., the cover) changes,
choose the source with the stable title to avert the need for a successive
record.
----------

Good luck,

Kathryn Wesley
Serials Cataloger
Clemson University Libraries

At 08:53 AM 3/31/2004 -0600, you wrote:
>Hello all,
>Admittedly, this is probably a stupid question with an obvious answer but
>I'm asking it anyway:
>I have several years' worth of reports from the Adjutant-General of the MS
>National Guard. They started out as biennial reports with the title
>"Biennial report of the..." Several decades later, though, the "biennial"
>was dropped from the title so that it was just "Report of the..." The
>frequency didn't change -- it's still a biennial report -- they just
>dropped the word. My question is, does this warrant a title change? I know
>the major/minor title change rules say that, yes, it should, but, does it
>really? The dropping of "biennial" lasted from the 1935/37 through 1943/45
>reports (as far as I know; I'm missing the 1931/33 report); the word was
>put back into the title with the 1945/47 report. Is this one of those
>cases where I can just add a 246 to take into account a temporary change?
>
>Thanks,
>Elizabeth
>
>Elizabeth Urbanik, Assistant Professor
>Serials Cataloger
>Mississippi State University
>662-325-7665
>eurbanik@library.msstate.edu
>
>"Frugality for the Public is a rare virtue, but when the public Service
>must suffer by it, it degenerates into a Vice" -- William Byrd II