MHRA Style: Multiple sources from the same author in footnotes?

pbsturte

Hi lovely Zotero experts--

I'm using the MHRA with Bibliography style, and I've run across a problem (that likely, hopefully, is easily fixable). I'm using Zotero for writing my dissertation, and often I have multiple sources from the same author. However when I cite them in my footnotes, it seems as if the style only gives author and page number (after the original citation). Unfortunately, this is a bit problematic because it doesn't differentiate which source it is at that point. Is there an elegant workaround? I'm using the latest version both of Zotero and the word plugin. I'm not sure which version of the style I'm using (since I'm not sure how to check).

Help?

adamsmith

no, unfortunately that's not resolvable at the moment - it's a quirk in Zotero's disambiguation that it can't properly disambiguate when there is no year given, so you'll have to do that yourself using the suffix field in the plugin. (the alternative would be to do what the current Chicago style does and add a short title for all citations - that's an easy fix if you prefer that).

There is a new CSL version which does fix this and which will be implemented in Zotero soonish.

fbennett

I've built a test around the MHRA style to check this in the new processor, and I have a couple of questions.

@adamsmith: The existing style does not include a disambiguate="true" condition for the title in the subsequent form of the citation. Is that by design (i.e. because disambiguate="true" is broken in the current processor?). If I add that condition, the title is added where necessary to discriminate between works by the same author, as per expected behavior. I don't know if this would work under the current processor, but we seem to be okay in citeproc-js.

@adamsmith + @pbsturte: For two works by John Doe, the new processor currently produces this test result .....[0] John Doe, <i>Book A</i>, 2000; John Doe, <i>Book B</i>, 2000.
>>[1] John Doe, Book A; John Doe, Book B.... where [0] and [1] are footnotes containing references.

As the example shows, the processor is retaining the full form of the author names when last-ditch disambiguation (i.e. adding the title) is applied. Is this correct behavior, or should the base form of the names (in this case the short form, "Doe") be used instead?

(Edit: After posting, I realized that this is not at all correct behavior, since the names are identical in this example. The cause was traced to a small bug in the processor, which has now been fixed. Short forms [last name only] are now rendered in the subsequent cites in this case.)

adamsmith

Frank - I'm pretty sure disambiguate=true is broken - maybe completely, almost definitely for the situation here - I tried it out and it didn't work at all, so yes, that's why it's not in the current style.

pbsturte

Ah. Right.

To answer the above question, the style guide requests that in cases of disambiguation like that, that the author's shortened name (read: surname) be used instead of the full name. With that being said, for my purposes I'm happy with it using the full name if it has to as that's better than nothing (and, as my supervisors tend to say, so long as it's clear and it's consistent we don't care if it's completely perfect).

At the risk of being a bit overanxious, is there any timescale for the release of the new system which may incorporate disambiguation properly? Reason I ask is that my PhD is due in a few months and I'd very much like to keep using Zotero (as I find it exceedingly helpful)-- but having to go through and disambiguate all my references for the whole thing will be somewhat nightmarish.

adamsmith

Even if someone were to tell you a timeline, I'd be very careful relying on it - Zotero doesn't have a lot of staff and on the few occasions where developers have given timelines they were usually substantially too optimistic.
The processor and csl are both done, what's missing is Zotero implementation - it's planned for the 2.1 release, but that's really all I can tell you.

djbduncan

@adamsmith: you mention that the alternative would be to add a short title for all citations. presumably one would only have to do this where there were multiple items by the same author.

I've tried filling in the Short Title field, but it's still not showing up in my footnotes under MHRA style. Is there a code tweak I need to do to start getting Short Title to populate (where it is not null)?