The Zombie Stack Exchanges That Just Won't Die
Part of the challenge of cataloguing serials is that these publications change their titles not infrequently (in both major and minor ways). I know that MARC has fields for varying forms of titles and former titles (246 and 247 fields respectively, I think). Is there a place (authority record?) then to look up all the titles that a particular publication has been published under? How could I find these records if they exist?
Such information would be valuable for researchers working with, e.g., historic newspaper collections.
trevormunoz
The best fields for showing related titles are the 76X-78X - see the MARC manual http://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/bd76x78x.html The 246 is for a variant title of the title you're currently looking at; previous / later / related titles are in the linking entries field.
As far as I'm aware, one of the better resources for finding periodicals titles (apart from trawling through the related titles entries for each record!) is Ulrich's Periodicals Directory. This contains previous / later titles. It's also online as Ulrichsweb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulrich%27s_Periodicals_Directory. Unfortunately, this is not a free resource.
Natasha is correct. There are no "title authority" records for serials that track all the title changes. Why? Well title changes are not always one-to-one relationships. Often titles merge, split, die, are re-born, etc.
The current rules call for successive entry cataloging, meaning each unique major title change gets a separate bibliographic record. Each physical form (online, print, microformat, etc.) also gets it's own separate record.
We track title change info in 780 (earlier title) and 785 (later title) fields. This includes merges and splits. We also use 787 (other relationship) and 776 (other physical form) fields for complicated and print-online changes.
247 fields were used in latest-entry cataloging and are now used for integrating resource title changes.
246 fields track minor title changes, as well as variant titles, parallel titles, other title information, commonly known titles, etc.
Ulrich's is a good resource, but even that isn't always complete.
Another option to see all the variant titles is with the OCLC xISSN service (http://www.oclc.org/developer/services/xissn). This provides information on all titles related to an ISSN.
There are a number of sources to assist in researching a title history.
UlrichsWeb (as previously mentioned...it is not freely available but many large public and academic libraries subscribe so you might be able to find a library near you that has access)
ISSN Network. ISSN are assigned by a network of 88 national centers around the world. Again, not freely available but on a case-by-case basis, individual national centers are willing to research individual titles. See the ISSN website (issn.org) for more information
OCLC xISSN service (as mentioned by Shana). Just a caveat, the information is provided by individual OCLC contributors and may or may not be accurate (as knowledge about serials cataloging standards can vary greatly among libraries). However, ISSN and title information will most likely be accurate for serials published in the U.S.
SUNCAT (UK Union Catalogue of Serials). It's purpose is to show holdings of the major UK libraries, but it includes feeds from both the CONSER file and ISSN database so it's a relatively comprehensive database (and free to boot!!). http://www.suncat.ac.uk/
Library of Congress catalog. Dependent on LC holdings but reliable. As with most library catalogs, set your search limit to Serial. http://catalog.loc.gov