Style Error: SBL

dstark

The SBL style seems to be having difficulty with a titled section in a titled volume in a multivolume series. The relevant sections of SBLHS are as follows:

7.2.21 A CHAPTER WITHIN A TITLED VOLUME IN A MULTIVOLUME EDITED WORK

⁶⁶ Richard Bauckham, “The Acts of Paul As a Sequel to Acts,” in The
Book of Acts in Its Ancient Literary Setting (ed. Bruce W. Winter and Andrew
D. Clarke; vol. 1 of The Book of Acts in Its First Century Setting, ed. Bruce W. Winter; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 105–52.

⁷⁸ Bauckham, “Sequel to Acts,” in Acts (ed. Winter and Clarke), 1:107.

Bauckham, Richard. “The Acts of Paul As a Sequel to Acts.” Pages 105–52 in The Book of Acts in Its Ancient Literary Setting. Edited by Bruce W. Winter and Andrew D. Clarke. Vol. 1 of The Book of Acts in Its First Century Setting. Edited by Bruce W. Winter. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993.

7.2.22 A WORK IN A SERIES

Volumes that appear in series follow the standard note and bibliographic form.

¹² Otfried Hofius, Paulusstudien (WUNT 51; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1989), 122.

¹⁴ Hofius, Paulusstudien, 124.

Hofius, Otfried. Paulusstudien. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 51. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1989.

Working from these sections, the output for a titled section in a titled volume in a series should be something like:

¹ N. T. Wright, “The Letter to the Romans,” in Acts, Introduction to Epistolary Literature, Romans, 1 Corinthians (ed. Leander E. Keck et al.; NIB 10; Nashville: Abingdon, 2002), 630.

³ Wright, “Letter to the Romans,” in Acts, Introduction to Epistolary Literature, Romans, 1 Corinthians (ed. Keck et al.; NIB 10), 632.

[[Although the two are the same in this example, per SBLHS's example, the italicized portion here should be a short title.]]

Wright, N. T. “The Letter to the Romans.” Pages 393–770 in Acts, Introduction to Epistolary Literature, Romans, 1 Corinthians. Edited by Leander E. Keck, Thomas G. Long, David L. Petersen, Bruce C. Birch, John J. Collins, Katheryn Pfisterer, et al. New Interpreter’s Bible 10. Nashville: Abingdon, 2002.

Instead, the current output is:

¹ N. T. Wright, “The Letter to the Romans,” in Acts, Introduction to Epistolary Literature, Romans, 1 Corinthians (ed. Leander E. Keck et al.; New Interpreter’s Bible; Nashville: Abingdon, 2002), in The Letter to the Romans (ed. Keck et al.), 10:630.

³ Wright, “Letter to the Romans,” in The Letter to the Romans (ed. Keck et al.), 10:632.

Wright, N. T. “The Letter to the Romans.” Pages 393–770 in Acts, Introduction to Epistolary Literature, Romans, 1 Corinthians. Edited by Leander E. Keck, Thomas G. Long, David L. Petersen, Bruce C. Birch, John J. Collins, Katheryn Pfisterer, et al. Vol. 10. New Interpreter’s Bible. Nashville: Abingdon, 2002.

adamsmith

I'm confused what's in what field. Could you export the Wright citation to Zotero RDF (right-click --> export selected item) w/o notes and attachments, open the file with a text editor, paste it into the window at gist.github.com, create a public gist and post a URL here so I can take a look.

dstark

Certainly. The gist is available here: https://gist.github.com/1711781.

adamsmith

Thanks, will take a bit - as you know, SBL is rather complex, I need some time to look into what's going on there.
Generally (as I'm sure you know) Zotero doesn't support volume titles (yet), but even with that caveat the output you posted above looks very wrong and shouldn't happen.

dstark

Not a problem. Yes, SBL formatting is rather complex (the need for an abbreviated series title in footnotes but the full series title in the bibliography is another example), but as you note, even if it isn't completely supportable at this moment, the output that's being produced does seem a bit odd.

Thanks so very much for your help!

adamsmith

OK, I've uploaded a new version of this. It strikes me that for your example above, the "10" would probably be considered a series number rather than a volume number and that works better with the citations, too.
That said, I've fixed the weird citation behavior you saw above and this should now look normal - it will still display the volume number right in front of the page number (as in: "10:610") for footnotes, as I take SBL to require), but it won't title and the editors for long notes and it will correctly print the book title and not the chapter title for short notes. Let me know how it goes - the style should be up in the next 30mins.

dstark

adamsmith,

This does work much better now. Thanks so much.

Concerning the example, the codex mentioned is actually a numbered volume (i.e., 10) within a series (the New Interpreter's Bible). This codex, however, does have the special quirk of containing three different author's works (which might normally be separated into individual codices) within the same binding. This occasionally happens with other series also (e.g., the Expositor's Greek Testament).

But, your suggestion to treat this kind of situation as a series within a series is a very good one and does improve the output even further (e.g., simply

³ Wright, "Letter to the Romans," 632.

for the short notes).

Thanks, again, for all your help.