Why?

If you need to cite the introduction, then enter it as a book section. If you don't, then you can include that information in a note?

see Chicago 15, 17.44-46. Does CSL handle such cases?

No. This is what I'd call edge case. It has no relevance for any processing, and if it needs to go in a reference entry,then I think using a plain note field is appropriate.

Moreover, if supported, it would result in more complex styles.

Note: I'm open to changing my mind, but I really think there are bigger and more important fish to fry before we worry about all the eccentricities of some styles (like Chicago).

I still am not sure about this, even for Zotero. Let me explain from the data modeling and GUI perspective:

We would no doubt all agree that it would be useful to have a full list of contributor relations: editor, translator, director, speaker, etc., etc.

In principle this is all good, so long as your processing tools know what to do with them (whether to treat a director, say, a like an author, or something else, and so forth).

But "introduced by" is in fact a completely different logic. It refers to the author of a component part of the resource in question; NOT the resource per se. It would be equivalent to saying "cover photograph by" or "second chapter translated by."

If you think about it from a GUI perspective, I once mentioned the idea to have a hierarchical resource list that matched the new hierarchical model we'll see. So if you clicked on an edited book, you'd see the entered chapters as children of the book.

Does it make more sense in that context that Spivak be listed as a contributor field in the main record, or that her introduction be listed as a full class record in the child list?

[edit: actually extending this further, how to deal with things like original publication titles, dates, publishers, etc. for translated historical works? Are they all just simple fields in the main record, or are they full related resources?]

before we worry about all the eccentricities of some styles (like Chicago).

I'm not convinced this one is an eccentricity. I see that MLA 5 (4.6.17) and Turabian 6 (8.43, 11.24) both address it. (I don't have any other guides handy to check them.)

It also looks like the guides are positioning these supplementary contributions where edition information would go. I can see some logic to that: It's not the second or the revised edition, but the edition with Spivak's introduction.

If Spivak's introduction is what's being cited, then yes, it should be cited and listed in the bibliography as a book section, but otherwise maybe "with introduction by Spivak" could just be entered in the book's edition field. If so, no new field is required.

If Spivak's introduction is what's being cited, then yes, it should be cited and listed in the bibliography as a book section, but otherwise maybe "with introduction by Spivak" could just be entered in the book's edition field. If so, no new field is required.

Well, no new field is required because Spivak would be just another creator--only a creator type needs to be added (unless this point refers to a World plugin field rather than a Zotero field, in which case, never mind). This seems to be important for searching--"creator contains Spivak" should then find the record.

Does it make more sense in that context that Spivak be listed as a contributor field in the main record, or that her introduction be listed as a full class record in the child list?

Allowing for the first option would be nice, for those who'd want to enter only the book item and not the chapters.

Well, no new field is required because Spivak would be just another creator--only a creator type needs to be added (unless this point refers to a World plugin field rather than a Zotero field, in which case, never mind). This seems to be important for searching--"creator contains Spivak" should then find the record.

But she did not create "Of Grammatology"; Jacques Derrida did!

Allowing for the first option would be nice, for those who'd want to enter only the book item and not the chapters.

Would you agree that "allowing the first option" would be fine so long as it appeared that way to the user (in the interface), but that you're actually agnostic about how it's stored, imported/exported, etc.?

I'm agnostic about the user experience of this, but I feel strongly that simply "adding introduced by" as some new creator type is a step backwards that is actually in conflict with the new hierarchical model.

I think the way forward is a flexible list of contributor types, which themselves can be classified, probably drawing on FRBR distinctions between:

1. works (creators)
2. expressions (e.g. edition or versions; think editors and translators), and
3. manifestations (producers, like publishers)

Different kinds of contributors can then be hooked up to different kinds of fields, and import/export and formatting can be handled reliably.

Just thinking out loud ...

Well, I don't thing the label "creator" is meant to be taken literally--a "recipient" of a letter did not create any of it and yet needs to be included as "creator."

Which actually underlines my point. I don't think Zotero should consider a recipient as anything more than a related agent; certainly not a creator and or even a contributor.

It seems "creator" is a person (or institution) whose relationship to the work is significant,

This may be how it's modeled in the Zotero database now, but it's not really right. A creator needs—for purposes of reliable search, citation formatting and import/export—to mean the agent that created the work; where work is understood in the FRBR sense as an abstract intellectual creation.

An editor or translator or recipient or a publisher, then, is not a creator. Using FRBR's somewhat awkward language to explain this, they have different kinds of relations to the resources in question. An editor or translator, for example, have major roles in the realization of expressions of works (say an English language text), and a publisher with the production of particular manifestations (the hard copy product I buy at Amazon).

This is why, BTW, these roles typically get labeled as such in formatted bibliographic entries; because they are not really creators/authors, but perhaps stand in for them (in the case, for example, of edited books, where the editor is used for sorting and labeling). So a formatting system also has to understand this too to work well.

even if this person only contributed to an aspect or part of the work. For example, most people wouldn't enter the film "Paris, je t'aime," made of 20 five-minute movies, as 20 items--it would be one "film" item with all 20 directors included. That's what IMDB does; actually, it lists 22 directors, including those who worked on transitions between segments. Then "Paris, je t'aime" would be one of the hits when you search for films by Joel Coen, which is what you want as a researcher. This is mostly relevant to GUI/search though--you may well be right about the need for more precise RDF import/export.

Right, and also about GUI data entry. Beyond limited data models that don't physically allow them to store the data hierarchically (say in IMDB) another reason why a cataloguer/entry person might choose not to enter each of the 20 short films probably has a lot to do with awkward editing interfaces that means it takes 20 times as much work. But if, for sake of argument, that problem could be fixed, users wouldn't likely care I presume.

Are you wanting to cite the introduction?

Also, is Robinson the editor too?

In any case, I think you're probably stuck with having to be creative (like maybe adding the main author name to the title?).

The current way a book section is handled is simply to allow a range of contributors to be attached to the section. The problem is this leaves no way to distinguish different authors: the author of the resource proper (the introduction) and that of the container resource (the collection of short stories).

I'd like to second the request for an 'Introduction by' feature. I use MLA, and the way that you would cite a book introduction is as follows:
Dinnage, Rosemary. Introduction to _Memoirs of my Nervous Illness_. By Daniel Paul Schreber. New York: The New York Review of Books, 2000. xi-xxiv.

Or a far more complicated one:
Derrida, Jacques. "Fors: The Anglish Words of Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok." 1976. Trans. Barbara Johnson. Foreword to The Wolf Man's Magic Word: A Cryptonomy. By Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. xi-xlvii.

I can't see how you would get this citation from the current configuration of the Book Section item type on Zotero. I have managed to configure Endnote to create such citations though -- it would be useful to be able to do the same on Zotero.

And yes, it *is* very important to be able to cite introductions and forewords, since in many cases in the humanities, introductions and forewords are significant pieces of research in themselves, often equivalent in value and originality to a journal article.

euj: there's no debate about the need to cite introductions. The issue is about how to support it. Forcing users to configure a customized solution that only works for them a la Endnote is, I think, the wrong approach.

I think the best way to handle it is to build on the planned new "hierarchical" model. An introduction, then, might be a kind of "book section." Upon choosing that "Book Introduction" (say) type, you'd enter the information about the introduction proper. When you get to the fields for the book, you'd have some UI magic that would allow you to automatically select a pre-existing book, or to create a new one.

From the CSL perspective, we probably just need to add a "container-author" (and perhaps "part-author") variable.

Glad this has been brought up. Just wanted to cite an introduction properly in APA style and can't figure out how to get it to display correctly automatically. I need to tinker in the editor.

I haven't read all the comments but surely Zotero has an option for a chapter in a book that is made up of contributions by various writers, with an overall editor. Why not handle it that way, with author of intro handled like author of a chapter and title of chapter, "Intro"?? And author of book in same spot as editor of a compilation? I haven't used Zotero to any extent yet, so don't know extent to which you can overwrite.

Pat

I've also run into this problem. Bruce's suggestions and erazlogo's ticket seem to be a good way to address this. However, I note that Sean Takats links to another ticket (relying on yet another one), and these were last modified 22 months ago. Based on that it doesn't look like we will see it in 1.5...