Citing the Congressional Record

qenghis

I see a few threads on this topic from several years back but no solution. How do I cite the U.S. Congressional Record in Zotero? Here are the Chicago Manual of Style guidelines:

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Since 1873, congressional debates have been published by the government in the Congressional Record. Daily issues are bound in paper biweekly and in permanent volumes (divided into parts) yearly. Since material may be added, deleted, or modified when the final volumes are prepared, pagination will vary between the different editions. Whenever possible, citation should be made to the permanent volumes. Note that, following Bluebook style, italics are not used for the name of the publication. The page number (preceded by “H” or “S,” for House or Senate, in the daily edition) is followed by the date, which is placed in parentheses. If the identity of a speaker is necessary, include it in parentheses.

16. 147 Cong. Rec. 19,000 (2001).
17. 148 Cong. Rec. S10,491 (daily ed. Oct. 16, 2002) (statement of Sen. Dodd).

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It's a very simple format--volume publication page (year)--but I see no way to get anything close with any item type in Zotero. Even if I set the item title to be 147 Cong. Rec., Zotero invariably formats it with quotes or italics.

Suggestions? Solutions? Workarounds?

fbennett

There isn't a suitable item type for this in official Zotero yet. In MLZ, there is a Gazette type, which maps to "gazette" in an extended version of the extended CSL-m schema used by MLZ. The cite above may already render correctly in the MLZ American Law style used by MLZ, but there are a couple of things to be aware of: (1) The MLZ American Law style will work correctly only with MLZ; and (2) MLZ and Zotero are sync-compatible, but database-incompatible.

You may be able to squeeze some sort of workaround into a standard CSL style for that form, but it will be messy.

qenghis

Thanks for the response and suggestions. I'm a little hesitant to install MLZ b/c of the database incompatibility. Zotero satisfies the vast majority of my needs except for some references to government docs. I've played around a little with customizing CSL, but yes, this seems messy.

Are there any plans to introduce a suitable item type into standard Zotero? I think it would be important for political historians.

adamsmith

fair chance we'll get something in to 4.2, yes. No specific ETA for that, though.

qenghis

OK, thank you for letting me know.

janbaykara

Any updates?

Scallous

On version 5.0.60 and still no option for congressional stuff. How do I add a citation style that Zotero obviously does not support as a foot/endnote and while also having it correct for a bibliography/works cited at the end?

adamsmith

I don't understand the question, sorry.

bwiernik

Congressional record items can generally be well-cited using Report. If there is a specific format for the citation you are looking for, can you give an example and also the general citation style you are working with (APA, Chicago, etc.), and we can give you some guidance?

adamsmith

Chicago follows Bluebook for citations from the Congressional record (examples in the original post above) and I'd assume so does APA -- I don't think we can reasonably do that with report while also correctly rendering actual reports.

I've been thinking that having a "parliamentary debate" (or so) item type would probably make sense -- in the UK/commonwealth tradition, there are very specific citation rules to parliamentary debate ("Hansard"), though those look very different from the above. I assume people elsewhere will also want to cite parliamentary debates though no one to the best of my knowledge has ever asked about citing Bundestag or Assemblee Nationale debates, say.

bwiernik

Juris-M has a separate Hearing type, which would work well here. Correctly formatting for different countries falls under the purview of the Myles jurisdiction functionality.

fbennett

@adamsmith: Legislative citation forms vary depending on how the scheduling and legislative process is organized in each country. It would be hard to come up with a general macro in CSL without Myles-type modularity.

bwiernik

But certainly a hearing type separately from legislation would be beneficial in terms of making single-jurisdiction citations more accurate.

fbennett

Not opposed! Just being picky.

adamsmith

Zotero does have a hearing item type so if we think that's sufficient-ish, we're good on the Zotero end. CSL doesn't have a type for that too and the current mapping is unhelpfully to Bill, which obviously has its own requirements. So I guess the ask here is to add a CSL type that Hearing (not my favorite item type label given that parliamentary debates and hearings are different things but I'll take it) will map to.

And yes, for people who need to cite debates according to norms in multiple countries, modularity is the only way to go and I think Zotero has been very skeptical about incorporating that.