Saturday, July 05, 2008

Abbreviations of book and journal titles

I often have difficulty upon encountering the abbreviated titles of obscure numismatic sources. Google Book Search doesn't know the 'obvious' abbreviations.

Yesterday I spent time looking up “Lenormant, Rois Grecs”, a citation in a book by Imhoof-Blumer. Eventually I realized the title refers to a volume, Numismatique complète des Rois Grecs (1849), in the 13-volume work Trésor de numismatique et de glyptique ou Recueil général de médailles, monnaies pierres gravées, bas-reliefs, etc. (1834-).

Using Google Book Search, Google, and the ANS library catalog in different windows helps.

For modern journal titles, the Harry Bass foundation has a list of the full titles of 930 numismatic journals and the abbreviations used by the Numismatic Literature journal.

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