Whats's the difference between container-title and volume-title?

pureimagination

https://docs.citationstyles.org/en/v1.0.2/specification.html#standard-variables

container-title
Title of the container holding the item (e.g. the book title for a book chapter, the journal title for a journal article; the album title for a recording; the session title for multi-part presentation at a conference)

volume-title
Title of the volume of the item or container holding the item;
Also use for titles of periodical special issues, special sections, and the like

But what's the difference?

I think a possible explanation could be here:

issue
"Issue number of the item or container holding the item (e.g. “5” when citing a journal article from journal volume 2, issue 5); Use volume-title for the title of the issue, if any"

But the sentence isn't completed!?

adamsmith

no, the sentence is complete. "Use volume-title for the title of the issue, if [there is] any."

That would for example, be for a titled special issue of a journal. volume-title is also used, as per the description, for individual volumes in a multi-volume work. While it's rare, these works can also have container titles -- so the title of the chapter would be title, the title of the individual volume it's in would be volume title, and the entire work's title would container-title, but even if not, titles of volumes would be cited differently.

pureimagination

"and the entire work's title would container-title"

According to my understanding this would be the collection-title, isn't it?

adamsmith

No, collection-title is for a series or similar collection, which is different from a multi-volume work. Most immediately relevant, in standard styles the title of the (multi-volume) work would be in italics, the series title would not be. Series are not cited all that frequently, but they are.
(In rare cases, a multi-volume work can also be part of a series; we may even have an example of that somewhere).

bwiernik

For example:

title: Test validity
container-title: APA handbook of testing and assessment in psychology
volume: 1
volume-title: Test theory and testing and assessment in industrial and organizational psychology
collection-title: APA handbooks of psychology

https://www.apa.org/pubs/books/4311510?tab=2

pureimagination

Ah ok, it took me long to understand it but I think now I got it. And thanks for the example bwiernik. I think the difficulty for me was that (at least in germany) the term "volume" is often also used for single-volume works if they are a part of a container. Accordingly the collection-number (Reihennummer) is often also called volume-number (Bandnummer). And the term "series" (Reihe) is also used for these containers which contain various single-volume works.

pureimagination

https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/issues/111

I think njbart was absolutely right back then when voting for the implementation of a multivolume-title because this would be much more logical. But I think now it's too late. I understand the reason because with the implementation of volume-title every old entry (where the multivolume-title was already stored in container-title) would be still valid.

But I noticed a problem if I want to create an entry for a volume in total. I just want to make sure if my theory is in harmony with the official csl logic if there is any. If I insert a volume via the general csl logic (where the variable "title" is used for the title of the lowest hierarchy level), it's displayed as a chapter (mostly in quotation marks).

So if I want to insert the "Title of the volume" and the "Title of the multi-volume work" I would do it in this way:

title: "Title of the multi-volume work"
volume-title: "Title of the volume"

Is this the official way to entry a volume?

I want to make clear instructions for students to create entries for every possibility. I attached a scheme of my mapping so far with my train of thoughts on the explained matter. There are no part-titles yet because they are optional.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u14793917/jp12cy3l579eve628igy.png

pureimagination

Just for comparison. This would be the mapping if a multivolume-title had been implemented. I think this would be much more logical.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u14793917/cc2ffy2u8rc5zmv0mhlb.png

adamsmith

Yes, the above is correct. As noted, this is not about hierarchies, but about the principle title of a work (and aligns with citation styles and cataloging rules as well as with, at a minimum, Zotero's data model