Chicago Style, Acessed Date, Electronic sources

muytieng
i am having a problem of Accessed date which does not appear whenever i reference webpage or electronic book ... does anyone know how to make the accessed date appear when we cite it?
  • aurimas
    Which Chicago style exactly and is the Access Date and URL entered in the metadata in Zotero?
  • adamsmith
    The Chicago manual doesn't require--and does in fact discourage access dates:
    An access date—that is, the self-reported date on which an author consulted a source—is of limited value: previous versions will often be unavailable to readers; authors typically consult a source any number of times over the course of days or months; and the accuracy of such dates, once recorded, cannot readily be verified by editors or publishers. Chicago does not therefore require access dates in its published citations of electronic sources
    CMoS 14.7
  • aurimas
    Though I do get access date for Web Pages in CMoS full note, so... it should work?
  • adamsmith
    Only when you don't have a date of publication. That's in line with the rest of the sub-chapter in the manual as well as 14.8, I just cut that off to not overcomplicate things.
  • aurimas
    Ah, right, that makes sense. @muytieng, there you go then: no publication date + access date
  • muytieng
    @aurimas: it is Chicago style author date.
    and i have tried not to put the publication date, then it appear that the year of accessed date become the publication date and the month and day of accessed date will be appear as accessed date. that would work when the publication date and accessed date are in the same year only.
    @adamsmith: but according to Chicago Style Manual, i see they cite the accessed date.
  • adamsmith
    The above is a quote from the manual. I don't know what you refer to as "they cite the accessed date," but the contents of the manual are the authoritative statement of the citation style, so that's what we go by.

    The instances of access dates in the manual are all for citations that don't have a publication date, such as, specifically for author-date, sub-chapter 15.51:
    To cite an undated online document in a reference list, use an access date rather than n.d. (no date). See also 14.7, 14.245, 15.41.

    Evanston Public Library Board of Trustees. 2008. “Evanston Public Library Strategic Plan, 2000–2010: A Decade of Outreach.” Evanston Public Library. Accessed July 19. http://www.epl.org/library/strategic-plan-00.html.

    (Evanston Public Library 2008)
    which is exactly what Zotero is doing.
    The only exception to this is 14.185, which describes how access dates should be cited if, contrary to what CMoS recommends, publishers require them.

    I've read the manual very closely on this, so I'd be surprised if we got any of it wrong, but if so, you'd need to point us to a specific section of it that says contradicts what I'm saying and what Zotero/CSL are doing.
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