Displaying short version of author name in citations

Question

I was wondering whether there is any way to change single entries in a bibliography. I want the cite command to give me a short version of this very long entry. I know I could change it manually in the *.bbl-file, but it would constantly be overwritten. Any solutions, suggestions or even a faint idea how to do this? Would biblatex offer something?

\begin{filecontents}{testbib.bib} 
@book{long, 
 author={{Very long long long long author}}, 
title={Title}, 
publisher={Publisher}, 
year={2011}, 
 } 
 \end{filecontents} 

\documentclass[12pt]{scrartcl} 
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc} 
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}     
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel} 
\usepackage{natbib} 

\begin{document} 
 \cite{long}  
\bibliographystyle{natdin} 
\bibliography{testbib} 
\end{document} 

Answer 1

Yes, it would. :-) Namely, the shortauthor field:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[style=authoryear]{biblatex}

\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{biblatextest.bib}
@book{long, 
  author={{Very long long long long author}}, 
  shortauthor={Shortauthor},
  year={2011}, 
  title={Title}, 
  publisher={Publisher}, 
}
\end{filecontents}

% \bibliography{biblatextest}% Syntax for version <= 1.1b
\addbibresource{biblatextest.bib}% Syntax for version >= 1.2    

\begin{document}

Some text \autocite{long}.

\printbibliography

\end{document}