Multiple place of publication

djbduncan

Hi
I'm new to Zotero, and I just wondered how to enter a reference when a book has multiple places of publication. For example, the book in front of me is Princeton University Press, Princeton & Oxford.
There doesn't seem to be an option to add an additional Place field, the way there is with Author. And yet it doesn't seem right to enter "Princeton & Oxford" as a single string.
What do other people recommend?
Thanks
Dennis

bdarcus

I would "enter 'Princeton & Oxford' as a single string."

James

You are right, this is the only way. If I want to enter more than one place, I just do it as you suggest.

Some large publishers have many places. For example, the book in front of me has five 'places'. "Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex; Baltimore, Md; Toronto, Ontario; Mitcham, Victoria & Cape Town" seems excessive.

So usually I just choose the main one, so for Penguin I'd use Harmondsworth, Middlesex and for Princeton University Press I would just put Princeton. I think this is fine for most purposes.

Gracile

I'm always entering places in the single field. Same for publishers (a related question, I think)

And yet it doesn't seem right to enter "Princeton & Oxford" as a single string.

Why? The only problem which might arise is that of citation output. But it depends on the style...

krueschan

I don't like that I have to enter multiple places like this. Different citation styles require different delimiters for multiple places and this 'method' requires manual changes if the delimiter used for entry is different from the one required by the style. Happened to me more than once before and is a pain in the butt.
IMHO The most logical way to deal with this would be the same approach as used for multiple 'people' (authors etc). I would definitely welcome this change.

Gracile

IMHO The most logical way to deal with this would be the same approach as used for multiple 'people' (authors etc). I would definitely welcome this change.

Sure. The solution above is just a workaround. (I know plenty of styles which require "Place of publication: Publisher"...)

bdarcus

Publishers can have multiple locations, and items can (though rarely) have multiple publishers. So the solution isn't that straightforward.

krueschan

That is right. This presents yet another problem, particularly, if those multiple publishers are from different places. (at least one of such books is in the pile right next to me)

This does, as you rightly point out, only occur very occasionally, though. And there is one more, even more relevant difference: while a number of citation styles do have rules for listing multiple places, I have yet to come across one that specifies how exactly multiple publishers are to be dealt with.

Thus, in the multiple publisher case, any solution that the user has come up with to deal with it will not violate the (non existing) citation style rules. This is different in the multiple places case, where the use of a different delimiter for data entry renders the bibliography violating the rules.

By all means, though, this is not a major issue at all and occurs in my experience only when publishing in different languages and countries using the same zotero library.

Dounia 26

Hi,

I'm posting this here, although I partly have my answer now...
I kind of have the opposite problem. I'm creating a style which requires, in the bibliography, only the first place to be cited. So if it is like the example above, only "Princeton" should appear. I didn't found anything like that in the csl tutorials. I thought there would be an option where it could use only the first element of the whole line, but it would be a problem if the place is "New York" for example...
Let me know if you have thoughts about that!

adamsmith

I think generally having places of publication added in a similar way as authors would probably be the _right_ way to go - question is if its worth the - not inconsiderable - effort.
Right now though there is no way to change in any way what Zotero puts out as place, which is always the string in the place field as is (apart from capitalization).

Dounia 26

okay, thanks adamsmith! csl and zotero already do a way better job than one could imagine! In any case, it's easier to enter just one place in the field.

DWL-SDCA

I don't have the books of standards handy but the two main cataloging standards require _ one_ publisher location and publisher be listed. There may be more than one location or publisher. If so that is treated as a different version of the book. The versions will likely have different ISBNs. There are probably rare exceptions.

fbennett

Re multiple publishers, there is a note on a processor extension in MLZ/CSL-m here:

https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/30660/mlz-multiple-publishers-places-of-publication/#Comment_160467

(Defering to DWL-SDCA on the question of whether and when recording multiple publishers on an individual item is a good practice.)

DWL-SDCA

I must correct my statement about the "likely have different ISBNs". I've been paying attention to this since I wrote those words. Having the same ISBN is more common than I thought.

That said, when citing a book, I believe that it is most proper to cite the edition that you consulted. That should mean one publisher (the first listed) and one place. Cataloging rules describe an item and can include its flavors but a citation should be to a specific item.