At SUNY College at Cortland we have had our bound and unbound periodicals
shelved in strictly alphabetical order (dictionary fashion) for 10 years.
As noted, the library patron has an easier lookup and greater success
at finding titles than if ALA rules are followed. The Periodical printout
used to find out if we own a title and if other formats are available, is
generated from a DBase database and the order is exactly the same. Thus,
the relative position of a title is the same in our finding list and on
the shelves. Unfortunately, we also still have a card catalog here at
Cortland. The cards are still filed with ALA rules. Maybe we should
have refiled the initialisms 10 years ago too.

Johanna Bowen
SUNY at Cortland
bowen@snycortland