Abbreviations Control File (Abbrev.cvt)

The Abbreviations Control File defines all the abbreviations used in the Publication Details Field in Item Records and Book Records. It is primarily used for expanding such abbreviations into the full details displayed in the indexes, but also has a number of secondary uses:

• It defines the order in which magazines are listed for indexes that do not have an index definition file.
• It is used for distinguishing between different magazines with the same name that were published in different time periods.
• It is used for distinguishing the different titles for a magazine that uses a single abbreviation but whose name changes from date to date.
• It is used for flagging up "obsolete" abbreviations where multiple abbreviations have been inadvertently used for the same book/magazine.

The basic records in the file consist of between 2 and 8 fields:

1. Abbreviation
   
   This contains the abbreviation, padded with spaces to a fixed width of 8 characters. Currently there are three types of abbreviation:
   • Old-style magazine/publisher abbreviations. These are always 3 characters in width (padded with spaces if necessary) and should contain upper case alphabetic characters, numbers or punctuation characters.
   • New-style magazine/publisher abbreviations. These are always 5 characters in width (padded with spaces if necessary) and should typically contain mixed case alphabetic characters, numbers or punctuation characters.
   • Book abbreviations. These are always 7 characters in width and should typically contain mixed case alphabetic characters, numbers or punctuation characters.
     
     Note that abbreviations should not start with a '$' to avoid conflict with internal IDs.
     
     
2. Book or Magazine Title, or Publisher Name
   
   This contains the book or magazine title, or publisher name, with leading articles and punctuation removed as for item and book titles. There are also special characteristics of the three types of entry:
   • Books are identified by a trailing ">" character at the end of the title. This should be the last character in the field.
   • Magazines are identified by a trailing "}" character at the end of the title. Note that in this case the title determines the order in which magazines are displayed in indexes that do not have an index definition file and hence any leading numbers should be translated to the appropriate words. The sort order is determined by the full contents of the field so additional data can be added after the "}" character to ensure identically-named magazines are sorted in the desired order. As a special case of this a date or date range(s) may be specified (in brackets; up to three ranges separated by semi-colons) to indicate the dates during which this particular magazine was published. Note that online magazines are identified by adding " (online)" to the magazine name if, and only if, there was also a print magazine with the same name.
   • Publishers are identifed by a trailing "]" character at the end of the publisher name. As with magazines a date range may be added after the "]". See below for a further discussion on identifying publishers.
   • There are also a small number of placeholders (identified by the absences of ">", "}" or "]") typically used to reserve abbreviations used as file names for oddments.
     
     
3. Author(s) or Editor(s) of the book. These are in normal text format (e.g. "Roger Elwood"), with multiple authors being separated by " & ". If the book is edited then the names are preceded by "ed. ". This field is left empty for magazines and publishers or if the author(s)/editor(s) are not known.
   
   In addition, if the book is a translation and the translator(s) is/are known they can be specified in one of two ways:
• If the editor is also the translator then the form "ed. & tr. xxx" may be used.
• If the translator(s) is not the same as the author or editor then they can be added after the author/editor names with the prefix ", tr. "
  
  
4. Book type, using the standard item types such as "co", "oc", "an" and "oa". This field is left empty for magazines and publishers.
   
   
5. Name of publisher for the book, in the same format(s) as for publisher names in field 2. This field is left empty for magazines and publishers or if the publisher is not known.
   
   
6. Date the book was first published. This field is left empty for magazines and publishers or if the publication date is not known.
   
   
7. Additional title information, as for item and book titles.
   
   
8. Alternative name used for magazines in listings, particularly for cases where the title in field 2 has been changed to adjust the order in which the magazines are listed in an index. Note that field should not include any additional title information specified in the previous field (cf. 20S).

Alternate Title Records are used in older files where a magazine's name changes from date to date but the abbreviation stays the same. The format is the same as for an ordinary magazine record except that the abbreviation is followed by a single space and a @ character. There may be as many copies of these records for the same abbreviation as necessary, for example:

ASF @   ~Astounding Stories of Super-Science} (193001-193101; 193301-193303)~
ASF @   ~Astounding Stories} (193102-193211; 193310-193802)~
ASF @   ~Astounding Science-Fiction} (193803-194310)~
ASF @   ~Astounding Science Fiction} (194311-196001)~
ASF @   ~Astounding/Analog Science Fact & Fiction} (196002-196009)~
ASF @   ~Analog Science Fact^--Fiction} (196010-196111)~
ASF @   ~Analog Science Fact^--Science Fiction} (196112-196503)~
ASF @   ~Analog Science Fiction^--Science Fact} (196504-19810817)~
ASF @   ~Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact} (19810914-199110)~
ASF @   ~Analog Science Fiction & Fact} (199111-199212)~
ASF @   ~Analog Science Fiction and Fact} (199301-2099)~

In addition to the above there are a number of special records, mainly for informational purposes:

• Records that start with a "!" character are comment records for reference only.
• Records that start with three spaces identify the abbreviations used for the different categories of file in the US data and are for reference only.
• Records that start with two spaces identify obsolete abbreviations. The spaces are followed by the contents of the old record, which is itself followed by " [use xxxxx]" where "xxxxx" is the preferred abbreviation to be used.
• Records that start with a single space identify two-character abbreviations used for publishers under circumstances which are currently unclear.

Examples:

  CYB ~Cyber-Psychos AOD} [use CybPs]~
15DCA   ~Fifteen Story Detective (Canada)}~~~~~~15 Story Detective (Canada)~
AmrPulp ~American Pulp>~ed. Ed Gorman, Bill Pronzini & Martin H. Greenberg~an~Carroll & Graf~1997~
BLM     ~Black Mask} (1927-1950)~
BLM#2   ~Black Mask} (1974)~
BMD     ~New York: Bradford M. Day~
SSM ~Short Stories} (1890-191409; 191507-195902)~

Publisher Names

Increasingly, publishers are multi-national and have identically named imprints in different countries which, from time to time, publish different items and hence need unique abbreviations in ABBREV.CVT to identify them. In general, the following principles should be adopted:

• The abbreviation for the main/original publisher (if in doubt this is the one based in the country where the imprint name was first used) should have an associated 3-character abbreviation.
• Versions of that imprint in other countries should then be created as five-character abbreviations by appending "UK", "US", "CA", "AU" or similar to the core abbreviation

Examples:

MAC ~Macmillan]~
MACCA ~Macmillan Canada]~
MACUS ~Macmillan US]~
TOR ~Tor] New York~
TorUK ~Tor UK]~

Note that publisher names in this file should not contain the location prefix/suffix that may be specified in the publisher field on the book record although they may contain notes on the publisher location after the terminating "]" as in the TOR example above.

Supplementary Files

In addition to ABBREV.CVT there are three, optional, supplementary files that are used by various programs associated with abbreviations:

• ABBREV.NEW: this has an identical format to ABBREV.CVT and is currently used (in the UK) to contain unsynchronised records. The contents are merged into ABBREV.CVT before use.
• ABBREV.XXX: this has an identical format to ABBREV.CVT except that all records are prefixed with an @ character. These records are used for converting variant names to a common abbreviation (e.g. converting Amazing Science Fiction Stories Combined with Fantastic to AMZ), particularly when identifying cover scan file names.
• ABBR.IDX: this contains a list of magazine abbreviations followed by the preferred old publication details format for that magazine (i.e. # = issue numbers; v = volume and issue numbers; * = no preference) and is used for converting between new format publication details and old format publication details.