Hi all,
i got a number of responses to my enquiry about title length. Suffice to say that there is no clear way forward on this one. Some people thought that these very long titles should be rejected, others thought that having a ‘more’ link so we could just display a short part of the title by default was a good idea.
Clearly short and meaningful titles are a good thing, and a number of people cited their own guidelines, but I would imagine that most guidelines would ask for a succinct title. We are in the position of taking in descriptions often created in the dim and distant past and moved between systems, and I think it is under these kinds of circumstances that these things happen.
cheers,
Jane.
Jane Stevenson
Archives Hub Service Manager
[log in to unmask]
T 0161 413 7555
W archiveshub.ac.uk
Skype janestevenson
Twitter @archiveshub, @janestevenson
jisc.ac.uk
On 11 Feb 2016, at 12:49, Jane Stevenson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> We’re just debating issues around very long titles for the Archives Hub, but I think it is an interesting question so I thought I’d throw it open to the list. These lengthy titles are most often at lower levels of description.
>
> We have a number of descriptions where the title is well over 1,000 characters and sometimes over 4,000 characters - so it may be nearing 1,000 words.
>
> We have to decide on our approach to this, and the options appear to be
>
> (1) to cut down the title to a maximum number of characters and put the full title into something like ‘abstract’.
> This would mean the title would be cut off randomly after, say, 500 words, and the full title would be visible in the ‘Abstract’ field (which we could label accordingly)
>
> (2) to keep the titles, however, long they are, but only display a set number of words in the hit list, and have a ‘more’ link for people to click on to see the full title.
>
> It raises the more general question of whether there is good practice to be followed around the length of titles. Archival standards are not very clear on this.
>
> ISAD(G) says:
>
> Provide either a formal title or a concise supplied title in accordance with the rules of
> multilevel description and national conventions.
> If appropriate, abridge a long formal title, but only if this can be done without loss of
> essential information.
>
> I would be interested to hear views. If you do create these kind of ‘page long’ titles, can you give a rationale for it. If the title is a legal document like a mortgage or settlement, should it just be as long as it needs to be?
>
> We can work round the length of titles by making changes to the interface to accommodate them, but should we be mandating titles that are not excessively long?
>
> cheers,
> Jane.
>
>
> Jane Stevenson
> Archives Hub Service Manager
> [log in to unmask]
>
> T 0161 413 7555
> W archiveshub.ac.uk
> Skype janestevenson
> Twitter @archiveshub, @janestevenson
>
> jisc.ac.uk
>
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