Worst Serial Title Change of the Year Awards For 2003

The Serials Section Worst Serials Title Change of the Year Awards Committee is pleased to present its awards for 2003. Awards for previous years can be found on the committee's website.

Here we are in Toronto � a very unusual place for the American Library Association to be holdings its conference. So this year, we thought we'd have an unusual award recognizing a momentous event that occurred this past year, but which was based on work done in Toronto a few years ago. We would like to present to the Anglo-American cataloging rules, 2nd edition, 2002 revision, the "We're Not About to Change the Title of Our Committee to the 'Worst Continuing Resource Major/Minor Change of the Year Award Committee' Award"

Marguerite Horn, chair, award committee.

Now for the formal list of award winners:

The " Gender Bender Award" goes to the Journal of women's health, which changed title from the Journal of women's health & gender-based medicine in Sept. 2002, thus reverting to the title it had from 1992-1999.

The " Ranganathan Save the Time of the Reader Award" goes to Utne reader, which changed to Utne in Nov. 2002 because "�we are not simply about reading but also about thinking." Maybe they should have put more thought into the title change!

The " It's About Time Award" goes to the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History, which finally changed the titles of its two publications: Journal of Negro history to Journal of African American history and Negro history bulletin to Black history bulletin.

The " Snake in the Grass Award" is a tie! To:

• ALA's Federal and Armed Forces Libraries Roundtable who, after 21 years of producing Federal librarian, changed the title to Federal and armed forces libraries in 2001, and then reverted to Federal librarian in fall 2002 with vol. 1, no.5; even though this is a quarterly magazine; and to
• Michigan Library Association, for in changing their publication Michigan librarian to Michigan libraries the last issue of Michigan librarian and the first issue of Michigan libraries are both v.67, no.3!
  [ Editor's note: We have edited the text of this to better reflect the intent of the award.]

The " Birkenstock Flip-Flop Sandal Award" goes to Friends of the earth, published for 10 years under that title; for two years as Earth focus; and now as Friends of the earth. They're learning how to reduce, reuse, and recycle titles.

The " M-I-C-R-O-C, Why? Because it's Latin Award" goes to Microchimica acta, whose new editor was so bothered by the mix of Latin and Greek spellings in the title Mikrochimica acta that he received permission fromthe publisher for a change in spelling, "�. even though this initially may lead to some confusion when looking for the journal in the listing of a library or on the net."

The " Carpal Tunnel Award" goes to The occupational therapy journal of research, which changed to OTJR: occupation, participation and health, causing us all to keyboard yet another correction to records.

The " Research? We Don't Need no Stinkin' Research" and the " Give Me an 's' Awards" go to the Journal of receptor and signal transduction research for changing its title to Journal of receptors and signal transduction.

The " Why Should I Change My Monogram When I Upgrade my Image Award" goes to Computers in nursing, which changed to Computers, informatics, nursing: CIN.

The " Hands Across the Sea or Even non-English Titles Can Change Award" goes to Comptes rendus de l'academie des sciences whose 6 series all dropped their series numbering, changed the main series title to Comptes rendus, changed most of the subseries titles, and added one more. This is just the latest in a long-standing history of merges, renumberings, and main series changes � and we're sure it won't be the last.

The " Ugly Duckling Award" goes to Beautiful British Columbia, which changed to British Columbia magazine. British Columbia isn't beautiful anymore?

The " Matthew Brady Is Very Disappointed Award" goes to Civil War times illustrated, which changed to Civil War times.

The " Fresh and Not Boring Award" and the " No New ISSN for You Guys Award" goes to People weekly who dropped "weekly" from the title, but haven't technically changed their title (according to their customer service) because they wanted to "keep everything fresh and not boring."

The " If You Can't Reduce It, at Least You Can Manage It Award" goes to Inventory reduction report which changed to Inventory management report.

The " Bouncing Ball Award" goes to AIHAJ, which changed to AIHA journal and which won an award in 2000 for the 1999 change from American industrial hygiene journal.

The " Boldly Go Where Many Have Gone Before Award" and The Worst Serial Title Change of the Year Award goes to Science fiction chronicle, which changed its title to Chronicle. We read from the Editorial pages: "� frankly the current title is misleading. The name Science Fiction Chronicle implies that all we cover is science fiction, which just isn't so�." So, Chronicle is better????