Isn't a dissertation with an ISBN just a book? Can you give an example where the ISBN would be relevant? (and ISSN - certainly not - why would a dissertation have a series number?)

And here are examples from Uppsala university in Sweden: http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?searchId=1&pid=diva2:208250&rvn=4

And a monograph: http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?searchId=1&pid=diva2:165360

Both with ISBN and ISSN.

Martin:
Would one of these dissertations be cited differently from a book? The Swedish catalog shows those theses as having all of the normal publication data that we'd expect from a book (and more than we find for many books!). Can you provide an example of how you'd cite a book in a common Swedish style and how you'd cite one of these dissertations?

For me, coming from the American tradition, I feel as if the thesis type is motivated precisely by theses being unpublished; a published thesis is a book or an article of some sort. But if that assumption will make it hard to properly cite Swedish theses, then I need to be more flexible in my thinking.

(edit: I keep thinking that Uppsala is in Finland. Sorry about that.)

Sorry for my delayed answer. We've had holidays...

At our university (SLU) references to theses have contained the word "Diss.", otherwise mostly similar to the book reference type, an example:

Bergquist, S. (2006). Bioactive Compounds in Baby Spinach (Spinacia oleracea L.). Diss. Alnarp:Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. ISBN 91-345-678-1.

I am not the one to judge how important this is, and the librarian I have talked to does not think it is of utmost importance, but she considers herself pragmatic in this case. I will try to get someone from another university here give their opinion.

sounds to me like Diss. can just be treated as part of the title.

In the past, usually the Type field has been used for this ("genre" variable in CSL):
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/10593/adding-new-item-type-dissertation/?Focus=50677#Comment_50677
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/339/additional-fields/?Focus=18612#Comment_18612
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/3873/still-more-bugs-with-harvard-and-multiple-authors/?Focus=24316#Comment_24316

[edit] Ah, right. I already had the feeling I was missing the point.

And I do think it makes sense to treat this as a series when published as books.

This would seem to agree with the university's practice:

All dissertations are part of a publication series (in our case Acta Universitatis agriculturae Sueciae).

Such data would cause some styles to include the full "Acta ..." name in a reference if the thesis is entered as a Book, so we do have fairly minimal data loss by replacing that "Acta..." with "Diss.".

Are we sure that the "Acta Universitatis ...." series title would never need to be shown in bibliographic entries?

In that case, I suppose we should add ISBN, Type, ISSN, and Series to Thesis.

have you tried using Report? It has the type field.

[edit] I just realized report doesn't have ISBN field. But I'd rather add ISBN to report than add type to book.

may I ask why?

Book is an often used item type, and normally doesn't include type in citations, so i think adding type would be confusing. But I don't feel strongly about this.

So if adding type/genre to books creates too many problems in citation styles, I don't see a compelling reason why theses shouldn't have series and ISBN (they already have type and ISSN seems unnecessary).

I see no problem either. The only issue is that most styles format thesis without regard for these fields. If a thesis is cited as a book and the user needs to use, say, a Chicago style, this user would still need to use the book item type to enter the reference. Maybe adding type to book is the best solution after all...

it's complicated and I don't think there's a great solution:
Should a complete citation of a Swedish dissertation include a publisher? A series?
Dissertations in Chicago style don't - but wouldn't CMS want that type of information included if it's actually available? This is a bit tricky - I would tend to say if something is published as a book it should be treated as such and any additional information should be added using additional fields - i.e. type and series.
But I do see the problem that Elena points to and I'm not super wedded to this, either.

If a work has an ISBN and a publisher, it's a published work, even if it's a dissertation.

But here I'm not sure that these are published-- they just have been assigned an ISBN, which doesn't necessarily mean that a print run was done and the theses have been distributed as the latest volume in the ongoing Acta series. The fact that these are simply defended theses and not theses that have been edited and turned into published books is what ought to be reflected in the style choice, unless Chicago specifically draws the line between Book and Thesis at the existence of ISBN.

I also don't want to turn this molehill into a mountain. Are there other benefits to be had from adding Type to the Book item type? Perhaps other genres that would benefit from it, like edited collection, or something of that sort?

Hi,

I'm encountering the same difficulties than the one listed above but for french thesis in law.
In deed most of the good thesis or published and it's absolutely necessary to cite the published edition because that's the one every library have, whereas the others can only be found in one or two places in France since the number of copies is very limited (less than ten generaly).
The other important thing to know is that if I use the type "book" instead of "thesis" than in my final bibliography the published thesis and the unpublished one will be in different fields. In deed the bibliography of a thesis is organised in different items : thesis, monograph (which means all the books except thesis and treaties of law).
So what we need here is to import in the styl "thesis" all the fields we have for "book" : serie, volume (some thesis has more than one volumes), number of the series (because most of the thesis's publisher give a number to the thesis published in that series, number ISBN.
See for an example http://www.sudoc.abes.fr/DB=2.1/SET=5/TTL=2/SHW?FRST=1
Moreover it would be great, in the field author, to add a sub-field for the director of the thesis which, in France, is marked differently if the thesis has been published or not :
- for a published thesis, the director thesis would generaly wright a preface to the thesis of his student. In this case we don't precise the name of the director because it's always the same. In the example given previously we would wright G. Wicker, "Les fictions juridiques", préf. J. Amiel-Donat, etc
- for an unpublished thesis, the director's name we will have "G. Wicker, "Les fictions juridiques, dir. J. Amiel-Donat, etc.

Thanks for your help.

@symac: there is a misunderstanding. I don't think that benji1988 has a problem with the translator. See this topic. Anyway, I think that a published thesis should be considered as a book in zotero.

Il y a une zone thèse qui indique que c'est un ouvrage issu d'une thèse mais je ne suis pas sûr que cette zone soit présente sur toutes les thèses éditées.

Je suis presque sûr que c'est toujours le cas (pas de vérification mais expérience personnelle: d'ailleurs je le copie/colle toujours dans ma notice zotero).

Why would you need the type of book? Does the university differ from the publisher? How does it show up in the citation? How does the thesis directory show up in citations? We'll need some sample citations and references to relevant style guides here.

@ ajylon
1° I need the type of book in order to organize my bibliography. I could do it manually by following the method indicated by Gracile, but I rather do it automatically.
2° The university differs from the publisher. However, all things considered, it's not necessary to indicate the name of the university when the thesis is published.
3° The directory of the thesis show up this way for published thesis :
- P. Morvan, Le principe de droit privé, éd. Panthéon-Assas, 1999, préf . J.-L. Sourioux or I. Coriatt-Attia, Le statut de la pluriactivité en droit social, PUAM, 1999, préf . D. Berra ; both or cited in www.cairn.info/revue-francaise-de-droit-constitutionnel-2001-4-page-779.htm.
- MAITRE Grégory, préf . MUIR WATT Horatia, La Responsabilité civile à l’épreuve de l’analyse économique du droit, Paris, L.G.D.J., coll. Droit & Économie, 2005, 315 p. ; cited in http://www.cairn.info/revue-internationale-de-droit-economique-2005-4-page-431.htm
- J. Gatsi, Le contrat-cadre, thèse avec préf . de M. Béhar-Touchais, L.G.D.J., 1996 et L. Aynès, op. cit., p. 12 ; cited in www.cairn.info/revue-internationale-de-droit-economique-2001-3-page-339.htm.

For the unpublished thesis the name of the director is followed by the symbols "(dir.)" instead of "(préf.).

If this development was maid, it would be great to add the possibilty to specify that, in collective books, the author cited has not write all the chapter but has only coordonate the work.
In this example, found on http://www.facdroit-sciencepo.uvsq.fr/m-neyret-laurent-23132.kjsp, L. Neyret « La force normative des principes de droit européen de la responsabilité civile », La force normative, C. Thibierge (dir.), LGDJ, septembre 2009, p. 529, L. Neyret is an author of chapter in a collective book (la force normative) coordinated by C. Thibierge.
When the collective book is directly cited (and not a chapter into it), we would also use "(dir.)" : La force normatif, C. Thibierge (dir.), LGDJ, septembre 2009

I can provide more and more example if you want.

Thanks for your help.