William,

I'm sorry if what I said implied there was a rule to that effect. I should have said, "We tend to prefer the fuller form."

As you say RDA says all things being equal choose the shorter form, "if it is sufficiently specific to differentiate the body." Often these acronyms or shortened versions are not particularly, or in some cases, remotely identificatory. For example:

International Conference on 3D Imaging, Modeling, Processing, Visualization and Transmission
3DIMPVT
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/mostRecentIssue.jsp?punumber=5954013


IEEE International Conference on Vacuum Microelectronics
ICVM
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/conhome.jsp?punumber=1000780

(n.b. examples picked more or less at random from IEEExplore to demonstrate a point; I have not necessarily done authority work for these two conferences.)

There are exceptions of course. If the sources of information use an acronym exclusively, or as sometimes happens the acronym remains stable from conference to conference but what that acronym or shortened form represents changes, then we may out of necessity use the acronym. Sometimes the shortened form takes on a life of its own, and what it originally stood for is dropped.

Benjamin Abrahamse
Cataloging Coordinator
MIT Libraries



________________________________________
From: Program for Cooperative Cataloging [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Robboy, William [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, April 28, 2017 9:34 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PCCLIST] Conference numbering questions

Ben, forgive me for responding to a question you didn't ask--and with another question, yet--but why do you say we prefer the fuller form? Other things being equal (forms found on equally preferred sources, equally commonly, equally (in)formally presented), RDA 11.2.2.5 tells us to choose a brief form if it is sufficiently specific to differentiate the body.

As for your first actual question, one could argue that if you feel the intention of the organizers was to drop the numbering, then you are not inferring that the conference is one of a series of numbered meetings.

My opinions only, not necessarily those of my employer.

William L. Robboy, Librarian
Mexico, Central America & Caribbean Section
Acquisitions & Bibliographic Access Directorate
Library of Congress
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On Thu, 27 Apr 2017 19:39:00 +0000, Benjamin A Abrahamse <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>... when a conference starts out numbered but subsequently drops its numbering, do we supply numbering in the AAP based on inference (to make it file correctly), or do we drop it (because numbering no longer identifies the conference)?
...
>
>A related question: it's not uncommon for conferences, in STEM at least, to have two names: a full form (e.g. 23rd International Conference on Cute Puppies 2017) and an acronym or abbreviated form (PuppyCon 2017). In these cases, we prefer the fuller form. But do we qualify the shorter form in the 4xx with numbering taken from the fuller form? ...