What is a serial?

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Contact: Leeda Adkins

Unit: Metadata & Discovery Strategy

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What is a serial?

A serial is a continuing resource issued in a succession of discrete parts (stand-alone issues), usually (but not always) bearing numbering, that has no predetermined conclusion.

Intent

The title is issued in a series of parts with no predetermined conclusion. The intention is for the title to be published indefinitely whether it actually is or not. The London Gazette has been continually published since 1665 and Exit Zero ceased after a single issue (#1 1990), but they are both serials because the intent to publish indefinitely is there/was there.

If you see material where it is noted that it will be published in a predetermined number of volumes it is probably NOT a serial.

Serials can be periodicals, but they can also be annuals, bi-annuals, published every five years… Again, the important factor is the intention to publish indefinitely.

There are two exceptions to this rule:

Publications of limited duration: resources that exhibit characteristics of serials, such as successive issues, numbering, and frequency, but whose duration is limited. Examples: annual or quarterly technical reports of limited-term projects, an annual report of a commission that is to only exist for five years, a newsletter from a single event such as the 1992 Winter Olympics, or the working papers of a single conference.

Reprints of serials: These are usually published in a finite set of volumes but their cataloguing is still governed by serials cataloguing rules.

Enumeration and chronology:

The presence of numbers, dates or a combination of both on the issue.

Enumeration and chronology are not always present, particularly on a first issue or, in the case of older serials in particular, a prospectus floated to see if there are readers interested in subscribing. If you only have this first unnumbered issue in hand, your clues would come from a statement of intent and/or material type and/or key material type names in the title.

Please be aware that the presence of chronology in a title may or may not indicate that the item is a serial:
Annual report of the Gloucestershire Morris Dancers, 2013 – It's a serial.
Best Short Stories of 2010 – Strong possibility it's a serial.
1945: The Year the World Changed by William H. Smith – Probably not.

Common serial material types:

Abstracts and indexes, almanacs and yearbooks, annual reviews and proceedings, directories, electronic databases, newsletters, Newspapers, popular magazines, research journals and trade publications.

Luckily for cataloguers, these material types often appear in titles. For instance, if an item has "almanac" or "newsletter" in the title there's a good chance it's a serial.

Below are the fields that should be in a "good" bibliographic record for serials. Those fields in brackets [ ] are valid if applicable and accurate.

• [130] - Uniform title

• 245 – Title

• 260 or 264

• 300 – Physical Description

• [310] – Frequency

• 362 – Dates of publication

• [5XX] – Various types of notes fields. Be sure to look for locally specific notes that apply to other Institutions – these are deleted from Aleph after record import.

• [65X] – All types of Subject Headings. These are nice to have, but are regularly missing from newspaper records.

• [780] – Earlier title.

• [785] – Later title.

• [787] – Related title