format errors of bibliographies

shel
The Chicago Manual of Style bibliography created by Zotero is not yet completely correct. So far, I've noticed that journal articles are not in quotation marks, that "No." shows up with the issue even if there is no issue number but just a Month (as imported from a library catalog). Can a user tweak these things?

Example (journal title is italicized in biblio but did not copy over, sorry):

2. Rosanne Currarino, The Politics of "More": The Labor Question and the Idea of Economic Liberty in Industrial America., Journal of American History 93, no. June (2006): 17-36.

I'm pretty sure the quotation mark problem is an import/translator(?) problem, since the record as it shows up in Zotero does not include quotation marks around the article title. Users should also be careful to note that imported citations sometimes don't include all relevant information (places of publication, for example, don't always show up.)
  • mph
    I noticed also that the MLA style doesn't handle editors correctly. I imported from a MARC record for a book with 2 editors (one listed in the 100 field, the other in the 700 field). Obviously, the one listed in the 100 field was imported as the author, while the one listed in the 700 field was listed as contributor (although incorrect as a description of the work, that's due to the MARC format, not Zotero). With the very handy pull-down menu allowing the user to change the value of the field among author, editor, etc., it's easy to correct ambiguities created by the MARC record. However, the citations don't format properly. For the sake of troubleshooting, here's how the citation is formatted with different values for the fields (all using the MLA option).

    The correct MLA citation (done manually) would be:

    Goldsmith, Elizabeth C., and Dena Goodman, eds. Going Public: Women and Publishing in Early Modern France. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1995.

    Default import from the MARC record via loc.gov:

    Goldsmith, Elizabeth C. Going Public: Women and Publishing in Early Modern France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995.

    Notice that only the 100 field generates an author, which makes perfect sense, even though Goldsmith is actually the editor (one of two).

    Changing the "author" and "contributor" fields to "editor":

    Going Public: Women and Publishing in Early Modern France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995.

    Notice that the editors are not listed at all. There is also a leading space in the citation.

    So I thought maybe I'd change both fields to "author":

    Goldsmith, Elizabeth C., and Dena Goodman. Going Public: Women and Publishing in Early Modern France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995.

    If they both were authors, this would be fine.

    On another point, I believe the MLA style requires the shortening of publisher names (e.g., University Press becomes UP). I don't know if that could be dealt with in Zotero, though.

    I think this is a great program, with great potential. Thanks a lot for all of your hard work.
  • bdarcus
    I'm the author of the Citation Style Language (CSL) they are using to configure formatting, as well as the primary author of the bundled styles. A few quick comments:

    shel:

    It sounds like your "no." problem is a bug with the Javascript code, not the style. The lack of quotation marks is also a bug either with the code, or with the data it's being fed.

    mph:

    You've also hit on some bug in the code. It is supposed to substitute editor when no author is present.

    I can tell you that CSL has no facility to abbreviate publisher names like this. I tend to think of examples like these as edge cases, but it might be smart to add, since it's also needed to shorten organizational author names.
  • sean
    shel and mph: Thank you both for bringing these bugs to our attention.

    shel: Please explain the problem you're having with "no." Do you mean that you're seeing something like "no. March"? Journal article titles should definitely display with quotation marks when cited. Can you confirm that the item type is "Journal Article"?

    mph: I'll check to make sure that our code falls back to editor when no author exists. At present we offer some special fields for abbreviations (e.g. abbreviated journal titles), but we do not offer any kind of logic to abbreviate publisher names. The best option I can suggest at this point is to edit the publisher name in Zotero.
  • shel
    Hi Sean,

    Yes the article type is definitely Journal Article. In fact, just to make certain, I saved a journal article from JSTOR just now. No quotation marks. I did notice in my library that I do have one article that does have quotes. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you whether I saved it from a site or entered it myself--which I've been having to do a lot since zotero won't read OhioLink's Electronic Journal Center or EBSCOHost through my campus library. I believe they are articles I hand entered.
  • shel
    Sorry. As far as the "no. March" problem: I think this is a non-problem. It occurred in one of the items of my collection that I believe I saved while using the private beta. More recent downloads have not had this problem that I can tell.
  • sean
    shel: Please send me the citation information for one of the JSTOR articles that is giving you problems. I'll also need to know exactly which options you're selecting (e.g. Create Bibliography from Selected Item -> Chicago Manual of Style (Note) -> Print). Please also confirm for me that you are presently running Zotero 1.0.b2.r1

    Thanks.
  • shel
    Sean,

    Sorry for the delay in reponding (teaching, etc.).

    Today i uninstalled and reinstalled Firefox 2.0rc3 and then uninstalled and reinstalled Zotero (1.0.b2.r1). I then went to JSTOR through my university library to retrieve an article. Still no quote marks.

    Here is the url for the article:

    http://proxy.ulib.csuohio.edu:2092/view/00028762/di951381/95p00034/0?currentResult=00028762%2bdi951381%2b95p00034%2b0%2c00&searchUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jstor.org%2Fsearch%2FAdvancedResults%3Fhp%3D25%26si%3D1%26All%3Dherbert%2Bgutman%26Exact%3D%26One%3D%26None%3D%26au%3Don%26ar%3Don%26sd%3D%26ed%3D%26jt%3D

    The bilbiography output from Zotero:

    1. Herbert G. Gutman, Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America, 1815-1919, The American Historical Review 78, no. 3 (June 1973): 531-588, (accessed October 19, 2006).


    My openoffice wordprocessor shows the ital for the journal title but not the quotation marks. There are no quotation marks in Zotero either.

    Hope this helps. And thanks for all of the work on this project.
  • sean
    This bug should be fixed in b2.r2. Please upgrade and verify that article export is now working properly. Thanks for your help in identifying the problem.
  • cartesian
    CMS format in 1.0.0b2.r2 misses a space for Book Section type in between the last quotation mark around the section title and the word "in" that comes before the book title.
  • jbrune
    Thesis format is incorrect for Chicago Style output in word. First, the title of the thesis should be in quotation marks, but with Zotero it is italicized. Second the citation should include "PhD diss." From the Chicago Style web site comes this example:
    M. Amundin, “Click Repetition Rate Patterns in Communicative Sounds from the Harbour Porpoise, Phocoena phocoena” (PhD diss., Stockholm University, 1991), 22–29, 35.
    In terms of the "PhD diss." (or "MA thesis") I assume this should come from the "Type" field that comes just before "University."
  • shane.lindsay
    For a book section (chapter in edited book) zotero doesn't follow APA style (5th) which should be:

    Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year of publication). Title of chapter. In A. Editor & B. Editor (Eds.), Title of book (pages of chapter). Location: Publisher.

    e.g.
    Bowerman, M. (1983). Hidden meanings: the role of covert conceptual
    structures in children’s development of language. In D. Rogers & J.
    Sloboda (Eds.), The acquisition of symbolic skills (pp. 445–470). New
    York, NY: Plenum Press

    Zotero ouputs this:
    Bowerman, M. (1983). Hidden meanings: the role of covert conceptual structures in childrens development of language. In D. Rogers & J. Sloboda (Eds), The acquisition of symbolic skills. New York, NY: Plenum Place (Pp. 445-470).

    - Title of chapter should not be italics (not shown here as plain text forum)
    - Eds should have a period
    - Pp should be pp
    - Page number comes before publisher not after
Sign In or Register to comment.