Citing Letters in Collected Correspondences/Books

AhrenLester

Hi,

I was wondering whether there was a way to enter letters which form part of a book (such a collection of correspondence). For example, like this (or something to this effect!):

Letter from Charles Darwin to Alfred Russel Wallace, 31 March 1870. Cited in Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, vol. 1, ed. by James Marchant (London; Cassell and Company, 1916), p. 251

I have to handle these quite a bit but can’t find a way to do them at the moment other than entering the letter and book separately (both in Zotero and the footnote in Word) which would seem a bit of a faff when using these often.

I did find this discussion from 2007 (http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/385/). But I couldn’t find out if this had been solved or not! What is more, I don’t think my issue is a complex as the one described in this (I may be wrong!).

Thanks for the help!

adamsmith

"Cited in" type reference in general aren't really supported in Zotero.
I suggest you cite the book and then add "Letter from Charles Darwin to Alfred Russel Wallace, 31 March 1870. Cited in" as a prefix to the citation.

AhrenLester

That's a shame. Is there a way in which I can bodge more creatively by any chance?

For example, set up a letter entry as normal and then a field such as 'extra'/'note' set it up in the csl file to appear. Then, in the 'extra' field write 'Cited in Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences , vol. 1, ed. by James Marchant (London; Cassell and Company, 1916), p. 251

Would work in such a field?

AhrenLester

Thanks @adamamith once again! I have managed to make a pretty good bodge myself.

I have simply included the details in the Archive field of the letter section and entered it as 'Cited in James Marchant (ed.), Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, 2 vols. (London: Cassell and Company, 1916), vol. 2, p. 187' with for the formatting.

It is a good way of at least getting the info together! The only issue with this being that it will not be shortened in subsequent citations. However, this is no great shakes. It does not concern me a great deal and can easily be edited at the end.

If anyone thinks of another way of doing this in a better way please do add a comment. Letters in collected editions or books are commonplace so an effective way of dealing with them would be great!

Gracile

I assume it's not possible to treat it as a book section?

AhrenLester

I assume it's not possible to treat it as a book section?

Not really. It does have a simple appeal but with so many letters it would become unwieldy. I am hoping to find a way round it somewhere.

Currently the only major problem I have with my above suggestion is the outcome of subsequent appearances of the same letter. I don't seem able to retain the full letter details (it shortens the names and removes the date!).

In others words, this:

Alfred Russel Wallace to Charles Darwin, 18 April 1869. James Marchant (ed.), Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, 2 vols. (London: Cassell and Company, 1916), vol. 1, pp. 243-4.

Becomes this:

Wallace to Charles Darwin.

When, in reality the best outcome would be either (preferred):

Alfred Russel Wallace to Charles Darwin, 18 April 1869.

or (at worst)

Wallace to Darwin, 18 April 1869.

Any ideas on how to go about this?

adamsmith

You'd have to tweak things in the section of the inline citation that covers "subsequent" - for details I'd have to see what you have and what type of data you're working with, but this should be easy enough to do - something like - within the
Conditional
----Subsequent

add
Conditional
----if type personal-communication
---- else

AhrenLester

I see @adamsmith. It does sound simple! Does the second (i.e. new) conditional need to be at the same level or below the original conditional?

adamsmith

nested in the original, i.e. one level below.

AhrenLester

Cracking. I will have a go in the morning! Thanks for the help again.

AhrenLester

Right. I have had moderate success with this. So I followed your advice with:

add
Conditional
----if type personal-communication
---- else

Here is a screenshot of how my final set up looks in the CSL Editor (I have shaded the bits I have added): http://imgur.com/MfRza

I have linked subsequent citations of Letters to query the 'Extra' (or 'note') box where I have included a shortened citation of the book and/or archives.

Now all this has gone well except that the original entry for subsequent personal_communication entries remains (in bold):

Alfred Russel Wallace to Charles Darwin, 18 April 1869. Cited in Marchant, Letters and Reminiscences, vol. 1, pp. 243-4Wallace to Charles Darwin.

Do you know where this can be edited (either to be removed or replace the current author/recipient field I have set up). Unfortunately, I can't find where the field is!

adamsmith

you want to move "contributors-short" and "title-short" into the "Else" right above them - i.e. only print them if the item is _not_ a letter.

AhrenLester

Superb. Works a dream now. I don't know why I didn't place the short contributors and title in the 'Else' to begin with!

Thanks very much for the help everyone!

AhrenLester

I have also discovered that by changing the personal_correspondence author field so that it appears as;

Alfred Russel Wallace to Charles Darwin, 18 April 1869

Instead of;

Wallace, Alfred Russel, to Charles Darwin, 18 April 1869

It led to the Bibliography coming out in the name order as in the first example above.

I have got around this by retaining the position of names as 'Wallace, Alfred Russel' and simply changing the Letter author field (in Zotero itself) to single rather than two fields.

This gets the desired result int eh citation whilst also (conveniently) helping to distinguish between letter authors within Zotero itself.

Gracile

simply changing the Letter author field (in Zotero itself) to single rather than two fields.

Others have to confirm but I'm not sure it's a good idea/practice. Is it not possible to handle this case with csl?

adamsmith

yeah, it's possible & preferable to do this with CSL, but it's a bit involved.
It requires to change author formatting just for letters (specifically, removing the "name-as-sort-order" attribute (i.e. setting it to blank in the visual editor)

AhrenLester

Others have to confirm but I'm not sure it's a good idea/practice

Why is this not a good idea? Does it cause additional problems somewhere along the line?

It's possible & preferable to do this with CSL, but it's a bit involved

By involved do you mean difficult or just straight-forward but long-winded?