Bibliography contains url in Itemtype Book APA 7

Annebritingholm
Hi! I use the Norwegian library catalogue Oria to collect author, title, year etc in to Zotero and I think most Norwegian students using Zotero do the same.
"Oria is a search engine that allows you to search Norwegian subject and research library resources; books, articles, magazines, music, films and electronic resources, etc." and this is the link:
https://bibsys-almaprimo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/search?vid=BIBSYS

Lately I have noticed that the field for URL is included in the info when I use the Zoteroicon from the webpage (item type: book) to retrieve the information. Further on the URL is included in the bibliography.

Is there anyway to prevent Zotero from adding this field to the bibliography in APA 7? We teach Zotero to all our students and hope to avoid that everyone has to remove the url manually to get correct APA 7 for books.

Here is a link to one of the books where URL ends up in the bibliography:
https://bibsys-almaprimo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=BIBSYS_ILS71639502810002201&context=L&vid=BIBSYS&lang=no_NO&search_scope=default_scope&adaptor=Local Search Engine&isFrbr=true&tab=default_tab&query=any,contains,intertekst norsk&sortby=date&facet=frbrgroupid,include,696503381&offset=0

Best regards Anne Brit
(Librarian)
  • damnation
    Looking at the APA7 guidelines I clearly see that they want the DOI or URL included also for books:
    https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/book-references

    "Svendsen, S., & Løber, L. (2020). The big picture/Academic writing: The one-hour guide (3rd digital ed.). Hans Reitzel Forlag. https://thebigpicture-academicwriting.digi.hansreitzel.dk/"

    Our style:
    "Etzel, R., & Balk, S. (Eds.). (2011). Pediatric Environmental Health. American Academy of Pediatrics. https://jamaevidence.mhmedical.com/book.aspx?bookID=847"
  • Annebritingholm
    Yes, but its not a digital book. The book is a printed edition. I just use the database to collect the book information (author, title etc). So the URL leads to the database and not an online version of the book. So I don't think the URL is supposed to be there?

    "if the ebook is from an academic research database and has no DOI or stable URL, end the book reference after the publisher name. Do not include the name of the database in the reference. The reference in this case is the same as for a print book."
    https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/book-references
  • damnation
    edited September 12, 2022
    Zotero can not differentiate what kind of URL it is, so editing the citation style itself is not an option.

    In my opinion, there is 2 ways of fixing this:
    - delete the URL
    - replace the URL with a "stable URL" as they call it

    @bwiernik and @adamsmith might have some more input though.
  • adamsmith
    right, the URL shouldn't be in the URL field for a print book (and you should delete it from there). We can look at what's going on in the catalog.
  • Annebritingholm
    Thank you for investigating:)
  • adamsmith
    I looked at this again and the catalog specifically has the item as "available online" and links to it with a stable link:

    https://www.nb.no/search?q=oaiid:"oai:nb.bibsys.no:999920233099102202"

    is a resolved persistent identifier, i.e. an oai, and as such would qualify as a stable link and could be included in an APA citation. I don't see how we could distinguish this from the print edition based on the metadata (though the ISBN actually is for the print edition): I don't think we want to change this in the translator (we specifically added those URLs in based on requests from libraries who wanted their e-resources properly imported)
  • bwiernik
    edited September 12, 2022
    From the perspective of APA manual, if the URL goes to the full text contents or somewhere the reader can access that, then it _should_ be included in the bibliography. It is correct APA to include a DOI or URL, even if the print version of a document was read.
  • Annebritingholm
    edited September 15, 2022
    Thank you very much for checking. I understand that the libraries want their e-resources properly imported, but doesnt that come in conflict with the fact that most people will not have access to the book in the url without a login? Arent they "spamming" the bookinfo with personal stuff, so to speak? I am not trying to be difficult about this, but I want our students referencelist to be flawless:)

    In APA 7 Manual in the chapter about books (10.2 page 321) they point to section 9.30 for more on including database information in reference. And in that section (page 295) the text is as follows:
    Most periodical and book content is available through a variety of databases or platforms, and differnt readers will have different methods or points of access. Additonally, URLs from databases or library-provided services usually requir a login and/or are session specific, meaning they will not be accessible to most readers and are not suitable to include in a reference list. Provide database and other online archive information in a rerence only when it is necessary for readers to retrieve the cited work from that exact database or archive.

    @bwiernik @adamsmith
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