Acronym Finder (http://www.acronymfinder.com/) is a searchable
acronym database that is fairly comprehensive. A nice feature about this site
is that you can sort the results by topic such as "most common," "military
& government" or "business & finance." There are some annoying
distractions such as advertising banners and commercial links, but for a quick
search, it's very handy.
AbbreviationZ (http://www.stands4.com) is another searchable acronym
database. You can search by acronym or you can also browse alphabetically or by
categories such as Business, Governmental and International. The broad
categories are then further subdivided into more specific categories such as
Military, Transportation and U.S. Government under Governmental.
Government
Abbreviations and Acronyms of the U.S. Government, created by
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis Library, is arranged
alphabetically by the title of the organization. You can jump to a specific
letter rather than having to scroll through the entire list. This website also
provides links to the official website of the agency, department or
program.
Commonly Used Abbreviations and Acronyms, Appendix A, can be found
in The United States Government Manual. Click the Government Manual
link. Scroll down the page to "browse a list of documents." Click the most
current year. Scroll down the "List of Documents" and you will find Appendix A
near the bottom in pdf or text format. The list is arranged alphabetically with
no searching capabilities.
USLinks has an acronyms index arranged as an alphabetical table.
When you click on the acronym, it goes to a brief description of the agency and
provides a link to the agency's website as well as a link to the parent agency
description and website if applicable.
Legal
Acronyms and Abbreviations is an alphabetically arranged list of
acronyms and abbreviations that includes publications (the full titles are
printed in italics); bar associations and legal organizations; federal and
state agencies, boards, commissions, and departments; legal terms; court rules;
statutes; and electronic databases and services. It is not as comprehensive and
there is a heavy emphasis on Washington state legal materials. Hypertext links
have been added for selected court rules, federal and state agencies,
publications, and organizations. This resource was created by the Marian Gould
Gallagher Law Library at the University of Washington School of Law.
The Association of Legal Writing Directors provides three useful appendices of abbreviations in the ALWD Citation Manual Appendices. Appendix 3 is a list of general abbreviations, appendix 4 is a list of court abbreviations and appendix 5 is a
list of legal periodical abbreviations. The appendices are in pdf format.
Bieber's Dictionary of Legal Abbreviations is available
on Lexis. On the search menu bar, select "command search" and then type LEXREF;BIEBLA in the search box which will take you to the file. You can
search by the abbreviation to find the full text using the "term" segment or
search by full text to find the abbreviation using the "text" segment. Example: TERM(DOL) to find Department of Labor or TEXT(Department of
Labor) to find DOL.
Bluebook Abbreviations of Law Review Titles is a list of law review
titles in alphabetical order with the abbreviation listed beneath the title. It
is a browsable list and you can jump to a specific letter of the alphabet to
cut down on scrolling time. This resource was created by the Marian Gould
Gallagher Law Library at the University of Washington School of Law.
Legal Citation Abbreviation Archives provides abridged lists of
abbreviations for administrative publications, court actions, reporters,
periodicals and code sources among others. This site contains a search engine
for the US Publications file that can be searched by keyword or jurisdiction.
There is also a keyword search engine for US Courts & associated reporters.
You can type in a state such as Florida and the list will provide the name of
the court, the abbreviation, the reporter to cite and its abbreviation.
