[mlz] Revisiting interviews

Interviews seem to be a particular interesting type, though I've never cited one myself. Most styles treat the interviewee as the author, while some others see the interviewer as the author, just by looking at the CSL Preview results.

The Bluebook seems to take a third approach by treating interviews as something without an author. When first cited, the bluebook formats it as:
Interview with Frank Van Dusen, President, Van Dusen Indus., Inc., in Rye, N.Y. (Feb. 15, 2000).
When cited for the 2nd time, it's formatted as:
Interview with Frank Van Dusen, supra note 1.
(Examples taken from bluebook 17.6.)

Currently amlaw.csl formats the first incidence as the bluebook, except missing the location part (in Rye, N.Y.), something probably difficult to remedy without adding a field to the interview type.

For subsequent citations, however, amlaw.csl formats it as:
Dusen, supra note 1.
which treats the interviewee as the author, inconsistent with the bluebook.

The most difficult part lies in the bibliography. The bibliography output from amlaw.csl is exactly the same as in citation except omitting the pincites and sort by authors' last name, which is understandable considering that the bluebook says nothing about bib forms. The above example is thus formatted to start with "Interview with" and sorted as if it's a work by "Dusen".

For twlaw.csl, however, I need to tweak the English bib entries so that they are not only sorted by authors' last name, but also displayed with the last name of the first author at the start like most other citation styles. Reference lists are required for most law journals here (mandated by our National Science Foundation), and while they differ in style, it's universal to have all items sorted visually according to the first author's last name.

I therefore prefer the bluebook's method of treating interviews as works with no author, so that they may appear as "Interview with ..." and sorted as such.

All of the above (except the interview location part) can be tweaked at my end. Just to share my thought on this, and you may want to fix up on the short citation form for amlaw if it's to be in sync with the bluebook.
  • edited October 19, 2013
    Well spotted, the AmLaw backreference needs to be fixed. I missed the example at fn. 4 of Rule 17.6.

    (For the benefit of folks who might come past this thread in future, in the appearance of the citation on the page, the Bluebook form is a descriptive thing with no person obviously cast as the author, but the "Interview With" creator from Zotero is always cast as "author" in CSL.)

    The bibliography section in AmLaw hasn't been tuned at all yet, but I think you're right that the sort order in the bib should be governed by the visual (with interviews grouping under "I"), and, for ordinary items, with at least the first name in the series reversed.

    If you'd like to discriminate word ordering in citations and the bibliography without maintaining two completely separate hefty macros, CSL-m has a 'context' attribute that lets you do things like:
    <choose>
    <if context="citation">
    <text macro="citation-form"/>
    </if>
    <else-if context="bibliography">
    <text macro="bibliography-form"/>
    </else>
    </choose>
  • Ah, great. Thanks the the "context" attribute. (I've been using the position test for that purpose, but must be careful to avoid such macros from being called in a subsequent citation.)
  • Another related question: is there a way to test for language/locale in a macro? I can't find any.

    As things stand, it's impossible to position both Chinese and English interviews correctly. The actual item formatting is not a problem, as I can call different macros within each layout. But there can be only one <sort></sort> section per bibliography section, right? So the sorting is correct for either English interviews or Chinese interviews, but not both.

    Any idea?
  • When coding the SIST-02 style (Japanese + English) I had a similar problem, and introduced a "locale" attribute that I haven't gotten around to documentating yet. There are several examples in the style.
  • Great. Problem solved. thanks!
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