Page 259 - DLIS006_INFORMATION SOURCES AND SERVICES

Information Sources and Services

Notes I & A periodicals attempt to cover current literature with as little time lag as possible. Because of
time and effort involved in production, speed of reporting literature is not a foremost
consideration as in the case of current awareness type publications.
I & A periodicals may be exhaustive or selective in coverage of literature depending upon the
purpose. Indexing periodicals, because of comparative case in production, may aim at an exhaustive
coverage of literature.

I & A periodicals may cover all kinds of primary documents such as books, journal articles,
pamphlets and bulletins, reports, patents and standard specifications. In some cases, the coverage
may be limited to a particular kind of documents. There are also I & A periodicals devoted to
unpublished literature and sources such as research reports, university theses and dissertations,
proceedings of conferences, seminars, meetings, etc., are also covered therein.

13.5.2 Presentation

The important consideration in the matter of presentation of entries in indexing and abstracting
periodicals is maintaining uniformity and consistency in rendering the bibliographical
description throughout. For each document, sufficient and adequate bibliographical description
is given for easy identification and location. The minimum details required for the purpose are
author(s), title and locus that are source from where the document has appeared. The indexing
and abstracting periodicals usually follow established standards for the purpose. A few additional
details which the indexing and abstracting periodicals have found it worthwhile to include are:
name of the institution where the work reported upon has been done, address to authors,
translated title and the language of the original document. Although some services provide
class number to the entries according to the chosen scheme of classification but the entries bear
a running serial number, which also serves as index number. It is obvious that abstracts are an
additional feature of abstracting periodicals. In the presentation of abstracts also, standard
practices are followed.

Did u know? There are different types of abstracts such as indicative, informative and
detailed abstracts.

Two most common methods of arrangement of entries in indexing and abstracting periodicals
are grouping the entries according to broad subjects and within them by author or chronological
order and backed up by a table of contents and several indexes as well as by alphabetical subject
headings. In some cases, a classified arrangement may be followed.
The provision of various types of indexes enhances the retrieval efficiency of indexing and
abstracting periodicals. Considerable care and attention are, therefore, paid to the preparation
of indexes. The common types are: author and subject or keyword indexes. Some may include
title index also. A few other helpful features of Indexing and Abstracting periodicals are detailed
contents page, list of journals covered, list of standard abbreviations used and explanatory note
on how to use and find out from the periodicals.
The periodicity of the indexing and abstracting periodicals is mostly dependent upon the volume
of literature that would be available for coverage in a year.

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