Help/Feature Request: Individual volumes as parts of multivolume works

Does CSL in general, and chicago-author-date.csl in particular, provide options for correctly referencing individual volumes as parts of multivolume works, and chapters or other parts of individual volumes being parts of multivolume works? Any such work might of course also include information about the series the work appeared in, as in the following example:

Plato. 1902. Republic. In Clitophon, Republic, Timaeus, Critias, vol. 4 of Opera, edited by J. Burnet, 327–621. Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

For details see, e.g., "Chicago Manual of Style", 14.121–14.127 ("Multivolume Works") and 14.128–14.32 ("Series"), in particular 14.130 ("Series or multivolume work?") and 14.131 ("Multivolume work within a series").

I have not been able to find such an option in the current version, but in case it is actually there I’d be happy if someone could help me out.

If such functionality is presently unavailable, though, I would strongly suggest adding it in a future version. It would be much appreciated if the CMOS specifications could be adhered to as closely as possible.
  • CSL currently can't do two titles for one citation - i.e. you can cite a whole multivolume series or a particular volume from that series by volume number, but you can't refer to both the title of the individual volume and the whole publication in one citation.

    We should probably add something like "volume title" - we still wouldn't be able to let users choose between the various possibilities of citing a volume, but at least we could do one of them.
    I may be overlooking something, though - one obvious problem is that this is often not reflected in library records. Individual volumes are either listed as part of a single catalog entry, or the multivolume work is treated as a series. Obviously that's not by itself an obstacle, but it'd be nice to do this in a way in Zotero/CSL that was reflected in someone else's data, too.
  • Thank you for the clarification.

    Indeed, I'd like to strongly encourage you to add "something like 'volume title'".

    As to your reservations, the library catalogues I'm familiar with typically do contain such information. In any case, I feel it is much more important to have the possibilities of presenting bibliographic data in a professional way, than any questions of whether fields can be populated in an automated fashion.
  • Has there been any progress on this?

    If not, I'd be grateful if anyone can suggest workaround. The primary references in my dissertation are from multi-volume collected works, so manually editing each one is not ideal. Is there a way to force a custom format for specific references and get them to stick throughout the document?
  • Nothing new. But if you're using Chicago style, wouldn't you only cite the full reference once anyway? All subsequent references would only include author and short title, so they wouldn't be affected by this.
  • Here's the particular use-case I had in mind:

    The reference I'm using has ~50 volumes of collected works. In those 50 volumes, there are a) letters, articles, etc.; b) books within a particular volume (so one volume might contain a number of articles and a few books); c) multi-volume books spread across multiple collection-volumes (e.g. Green Eggs and Ham book volume 1 (collection volume 25), Green Eggs and Ham book volume 2 (collection volume 26), etc. d) one volume books spread across multiple collection volumes ( Green Eggs and Ham, collection vols. 1-4).

    Unless I'm missing something, there's just no straightforward way to deal with this in Zotero. I come across a number of problems (some of which I've found workarounds for, but nevertheless they involve quite a bit of manipulation and the citation logic across these various type of references inside the collection end up making very little sense together).

    Even if I use Chicago, as far as I'm aware I need to do a full note for each unique reference (which can be upwards of 30 in a paper) even if they are all from the same collected works. I haven't found an elegant way of citing cases of type b) which are both books and sections within a particular volume (within a collection of volumes); c) cases which require that book volume and collection volume are kept separate and noted. d) cases are also tough because even when I cite a book (after the original full reference), I need to specify which collection volume I'm citing from... and so on.

    Maybe my issue is not simply with volume titles, but with the more general issue of dealing with complex multi-volume collected works.
  • Some actual rather than Seuss examples with complete citations as needed would probably help to clarify this.
  • edited December 3, 2013
    Here are some examples using Chicago Full note. (the italics have been lost in this comment box)

    Book within single volume of collection of volumes via Zotero:

    Full: Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, vol. 3, 50 vols. (New York: International Publishers, 1975).
    N: Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.
    N (with page #): Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, 3:23.

    Issue: No place for Collection Volume Title (Marx Engels Collected Works)
    Workaround: Manually edit first instance (to add volume title). No problem with subsequent notes.


    Multi-volume book across multiple collection volumes:

    Full: Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (New York: International Publishers, 1996).
    N: Marx, Capital.

    Issue: No Collection Volume Title (MECW), no collection volume # (35, 36, 37). When cited with Capital vol. 2, distinguished as follows:
    Marx, Capital, 1996. <-vol. 1
    Marx, Capital, 1997. <- vol. 2 Should be distinguished by book volume not date.
    Marx, Capital, 1997, 2:22. <-- citing page 22. If anything, this should be 36:22 (CV#:p.#)

    Also, one standard way of formatting these references is to always include collection volume number even in the truncated citations (Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, 3:23.). No way of converting to that if necessary for different publishers since Zotero does not have an input for Collection Volume #.

    Workaround: Edit first full reference and manually add collection volume title and volume number. Haven't come up with a satisfactory way of specifying book volume in subsequent cites. Ditto replacing book volume 2 with collection volume 36. And no solution for changing to format that calls for always present Collection Volume # if necessary.

    One Book across multiple Collection Volumes:

    Full: Karl Marx, Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy (Grundrisse), vol. 28–29 (New York: International Publishers, 1986).
    Note: Marx, Grundrisse.
    With page#: Marx, Grundrisse, 28–29:35. (28-29 are collection volumes #s inputted into zotero volume#)

    Issue: In addition to issues noted above, I cannot distinguish which collection volume # I am citing.

    Workaround: Edit first full reference and manually add collection volume title. Manually deleting "28-29" in subsequent citation and inputting CV#:Page# in the Page input in Zotero prompt. Not much of a workaround..


    Some general thoughts: with enough work, it's probably possible to get everything looking like what it should, but it involves a lot of counter intuitive practices (e.g. sometimes inputting book volume# in Zotero field, and other times inputting collection volume# in the field when all the relevant references are from the same collection). This pretty much locks me into one style, since I have to do so much manual editing that switching document citation style will basically mean going through 80% of the citations and editing them again. There are other workarounds for the various issues, I'm sure--some of which I've tried--but they too raise their own issues...
  • Yeah, for most of this we do need to volume title.
    As for Capital - my inclination would be to include the volume number in the title field, that takes care of all of your issues with that, I believe.

    For other workarounds you can consider using series and series number for the MECW and MECW volume number.
  • The initial sample of this thread was:

    Plato. 1902. Republic. In Clitophon, Republic, Timaeus, Critias, vol. 4 of Opera, edited by J. Burnet, 327–621. Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    If I use Book Section, I have too many titles here:
    1. Republic = this is title of the text, so I can use Title field
    2. Clitophon, Republic, Timaeus, Critias = volume title. I can use Volume field, e.g. „4: Clitophon, Republic, Timaeus, Critias”. For that a volume title will be the best solution.
    3. Opera = book title, so I can use Book Title field in Zotero.
    4. Oxford Classical Texts = Series Title

    For Book Section, my only problem here is that I obtain "Republic" between quotes, and I want it in italics. Is there any possibility to solve that? How will the addition of a volume title solve this?

    Thank you very much!
  • edited July 12, 2014
    The addition of "volume-title" alone will not solve this.

    We would need either a new item type (analogous to biblatex's "bookinbook") that would format titles differently, or we'd need some inline markup (e.g., <span class="noquotes">) that would cause processors to remove surrounding quotes (and maybe also italicize).
  • But we could test for the presence of a value in a volume-title variable. Are there examples where that would not resolve the ambiguity (that is, where the field would contain a value, but not refer to a named sub-volume in a multi-volume publication)?
  • There are two different issues:

    One is how to represent the different titles of multivolume works, such as

    Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. Vol. 1, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971.

    or

    Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600). Vol. 1 of The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971.

    (from CMoS, 16e, 14.124; both forms listed as correct)

    and chapters in multivolume works, such as

    Pelikan, Jaroslav. “Praeparatio Evangelica.” In The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. Vol. 1, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600), 11–67. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971.

    or

    Pelikan, Jaroslav. “Praeparatio Evangelica.” In The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600). Vol. 1 of The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, 11–67. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971.

    (after CMoS, 16e, 14.124)

    This issue will be resolved as soon as the new CSL variable "volume-title" is adopted.

    The second issue is how to deal with a named sub-volume, or, as CMoS calls it, a "book-length work within a book" (see CMoS, 16e, 14.114). This does not have to be part of a multivolume work (it could also be something like Hamlet in a one-volume Shakespeare's Works), so the presence or absence of volume-title is irrelevant. Such items are formatted just like book chapters, with the sole exception that their titles should not be rendered upright and in quotes but in italics and without quotes. Here, the question is, do we need an additional item type (that's what biblatex opted for, introducing "bookinbook"), or can we find a acceptable way to remove, or suppress quotes normally inserted by a style file. (A dedicated new item type would probably be the much cleaner solution, I guess.)
  • Got it, thanks for the reference. The rule at 14.114 is discretionary ("may be italicized"), but that's the editor's choice, so the citing author may need to follow it as a rule. It's not my call, but the item type seems the better way to handle it. Markup to suppress style-specific formatting would not be a good thing.
  • Came to the forum with precisely this question. Having read the entire thread to this point, am I right to conclude that there is currently no way to handle the book-within-a-book scenario in CMS 14.114? Could somebody summarize the current status and projected fix for me? Thanks!

    Let me also add my concern to make any fix compatible with CMS note plus bibliography style for book manuscripts. This would need to handle not only correct note citation in any given chapter, but bibliographic format at the end of the book.
  • What is the status of this issue? When will we be able to add a titled volume in a multivolume work? This is relevant to those of us who use The SBL Handbook of Style, 2nd edition (see §6.2.21).
  • nothing new, nothing soon, sorry.
  • edited October 11, 2015
    Both citeproc-js and pandoc-citeproc have been supporting the unofficial but generally agreed-upon CSL variable “volume-title” for quite some time now. I have a version of chicago-author-date.csl that supports “volume-title” at https://gist.github.com/nickbart1980/6dcecfab90c8a4a819be. Maybe this helps you patching the SBL style.

    If you cannot or don’t want to use inofficial variables, you could try “section”. It is never used for books, AFAICT, its definition is “container section holding the item”, and it seems straightforward to say that a volume is some kind of section of a container.

    @adamsmith: Until “volume-title” is officially adopted – and frankly, I’m more than puzzled why this takes so long – could we possibly use “section” to fill this gap for the official chicago-author-date.csl, and maybe other styles, too?
  • no, sorry, section is too hackish for my taste here to include it in the official styles.

    There's not been a CSL update since your first post. Getting these out is a _ton_ of work: there's the decision about what's going to go into them and what not. There's updating the specifications. There's arguing about the details (You've seen discussions on xbiblio). There's coordination with the citeproc authors. There's really nothing puzzling about this.
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