Adding output fields to Chicago Style footnotes

Risikio

1. Zotero does not have a citation for an e-book, so I have formatted all of my e-books (from Google Books) as book citations and added the URL. This works fine, except that Zotero does not insert the accessed date in the footnote. How can I add this information?

2. There is no reprint field for books. How do I add one? A reprint is not the same as a new edition, so using the edition field is not a good idea.

Thanks

adamsmith

1. The CMoS style currently doesn't put any access dates - specifically for e-books (as well as online journal articles), CMoS doesn't require access dates - on other items it's usually optional and so Elena, who coded the style for Zotero decided to leave it out - it's possible to include, but Chicago style is a bit complicated so it's not super trivial - are you sure you need it?

2. Currently Zotero has no support for mutliple dates (and thus reprints) - somehow this is moving especially slowly, so this might take some time before we get there.

Risikio

Adam,

The e-books I am citing are for my Master's Thesis in history. I have already been informed by my advisor that I have to include access dates for all online materials. I had submitted a rough draft of a portion of my thesis and did not have the access dates in the footnotes. I was told I had to fix them for the final version before I defend.

If I enter the access dates in the suffix field, will the output be correct?

Thanks.

adamsmith

oh my, how I love self-absorbed, clueless academics. Well, not your fault.
No, the suffix field won't do - if you're going to use accessed dates in CMoS they should be before the URL.
I can see if I can rig something for you over the weekend - remind me if I haven't gotten back here by Monday pm.

Risikio

Adam,

According to my Turabian Manual, the access date comes after the URL in Chicago Style. That's why I thought the suffix field would work.

James

adamsmith

I don't have a paper copy, but these are usually correct:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/717/04/
but why not just check with your advisor if access date at the end is ok - I have no way of predicting what he wants.

Risikio

Adam,

Putting the access date after the URL is acceptable. No need to spend time on this.

Thanks for the help.

James

samuelas

(A slightly off-topic comment)--This is a surprising level of attention to citation style from your advisor--I hope she or he brings that level of attention to your ideas!--and it misunderstands some elements of CMS (which is actually a flexible set of guidelines that emphasizes consistency and clarity above all). Since the Google Book is a scanned PDF and should differ in no way from the printed matter, one would usually treat it like printed text. Access dates are required for websites, for obvious reasons.

adamsmith

my words exactly. I couldn't agree more.

Risikio

It is not so much my advisor as it is the department. Our department is pretty particular about how they want citations. I agree they go a little overboard, but its what they want and if I want to graduate, I have to abide. Consequently other students in the department made comments similar to those posted here, only to find that their advisors were also expecting the same information.

noanhe@gmail.com

I have exactly the same problem as Risikio. And so do all students in my university. Many of us use Zotero and we are supposed to use CMS, but professors and thesis supervisors insist on having access data of all online sources. So, please, please, if somebody could tell me how to make this work...
Since Zotero does automatically save the date and time of when a website or online source was inserted, I think there should be a possibility to include this date in the footnotes and bibliography? I would be very glad if somebody could answer the soonest possible. Thanks!!!

adamsmith

I won't get to this for some time - you can try doing this yourself:
http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step
you'll want something like:

<text term="accessed" text-case="capitalize-first" suffix=" "/>
<date variable="accessed">
<date-part name="month" suffix=" "/>
<date-part name="day" suffix=", "/>
<date-part name="year"/>
</date>

I'd also be quite curious what type of College/University does this?
Let me just say again that I would strongly encourage you to engage your faculty on this. More and more styles are moving away from accessed dates, which are a relict of early internet days.
The case for leaving out accessed dates is even stronger if you're using Zotero, which, as you know, archives any webpage you cite, so you can reproduce cites as needed.

bdarcus

Let me just say again that I would strongly encourage you to engage your faculty on this. More and more styles are moving away from accessed dates, which are a relict of early internet days.

Indeed. Ask your supervisors to read this thread; many of us supervise theses too!

Access dates are really an awkward way to describe versions of potentially changing electronic documents. But it's hardly appropriate for much of what we cite in 2011. And if CMS doesn't require it, you shouldn't either.

hdeweyh

I hate to revive an old thread but this is exactly the issue I am experiencing. My school wants me to add an accessed date to every single URL in my dissertation references/footnotes.

I tried the edit above as well as the one mentioned here:
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/20258/adding-accessed-date-to-chicago-style/


but neither worked for me, perhaps due to changes in the intervening years? Or maybe I am placing this text in the incorrect part of the document.
Any (more) hints on how to accomplish this short of manually adding in each date would be very much appreciated!

adamsmith

Sorry for the late reply -- July 4th and all. If you find this passage, which occurs twice in the style
<choose>
<if variable="issued" match="none">
<group delimiter=" ">
<text term="accessed"/>
<date variable="accessed" form="text"/>
</group>
</if>

and change it to
<choose>
<if variable="URL" match="any">
<group delimiter=" ">
<text term="accessed"/>
<date variable="accessed" form="text"/>
</group>
</if>

that should work.