Secondary vs. Source Literature: Two Different Citing Styles within a Document

In my work I use two types of literature, that need different citing styles: secondary literature (I) and source literature (II).

I For the secondary literature I use the Chicago style (full note with bibliography). As a style is exactly what I need, with the only disadvantage that it uses English abbreviations, and I need the Latin ones.

II For the source literature I need some modifications in comparison to the standard Chicago:
1. The notes should contain only the short title and the page number.
2. The first note should be the same as the following ones (no extended first note)

Is this possible and how?
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  • no, not possible.
    It might be possible to adjust the style using the fact that primary sources tend to be different item types, but that would be a good bit of work and you'd likely be on your own - at least I don't have time for that.
    Getting Latin abbreviations into Chicago isn't terribly hard, though

    http://citationstyles.org/downloads/specification.html#locale
    http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step
  • ...Examples:

    I Secondary literature citation (first citation):
    - P. Enepikides, “Der Briefwechsel des Mystikers Nikolaos Kabasilas, kommentierte Textausgabe,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 46 (1953): 18-46

    And this is completely OK.

    II A primary literature citation in Chicago style looks like:

    - Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita, De divinis nominibus, ed. Beate Regina Suchla (Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1988), IV, 13.

    But it Should look like:

    - DivNom, IV, 13

    (no matter if it is the first or the fifth citation)
  • edited April 25, 2011
    Thanks for the fast feedback!

    Unfortunately in this way I am stuck - I can insert the source citations manually, but they won't be recognized from zotero, which means that the next "ibid." will refer to the last zotero item (and between them I have already a couple of manually inserted citations from the sources)...

    In the same time I think it's not a bad idea to make this somehow possible, because there is a lot of users work in the field of Philosophy, Philology, Theology etc. that would need this option. I am recommending zotero to my colleagues on my Institute, but without this option it seems to be not very useful...
  • You could edit in the show editor field instead - that should do the trick for you and since you're probably not likely to switch citation styles the downside (i.e. no updating of citation info and style change) isn't too bad.
    CSL can work with labels which might help here, but Zotero hasn't incorporated that yet. Otherwise I'm not sure what the csl folks are thinking about this type of thing.
  • edited April 25, 2011
    Exactly what is the "DivNom, IV, 13" source document? This sounds a bit like earlier requests for special handling of "classical works."
  • It's the one he cites in full above - i.e. it's an abbreviation for
    Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita, De divinis nominibus, IV, 31
    my understanding is that this type of thing is very common among theologians and classicists when referring to old, frequently cited texts.
  • edited April 25, 2011
    Right, but what IS it? A book? A classical work? What makes it "primary"?
  • OK, this is some solution for now...

    I) "Probably not likely to switch citation styles the downside".

    Maybe for now, but if in the future I have to change the style for the whole Book (some 300 pages) it seems to me it will be a nightmare...

    II) "Getting Latin abbreviations into Chicago isn't terribly hard, though

    http://citationstyles.org/downloads/specification.html#locale
    http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step"

    I don't like to murmur (I like Zotero, the whole concept, I am spending hours to get used to it) - but this seems to me as a solution for someone that has a degree in Informatics, not in Philosophy... It simply doesn't help to me at all. Isn't is possible simply to download the modified/localized/latinized style from somewhere and install it, and not to reprogram it?
  • @bdracus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_source

    In my case these are antique and medieval texts (books, sermons, disputes etc...), which are published today in critical editions (through comparison of different manuscripts, studying of the sources etc.), like the one from P. Enepikides, form the "Byzantinische Zeitschrift 46" quoted above.

    (For "secondary literature" see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_source)
  • Unfortunately in this way I am stuck - I can insert the source citations manually, but they won't be recognized from zotero, which means that the next "ibid." will refer to the last zotero item (and between them I have already a couple of manually inserted citations from the sources)...
    In a footnote style, this shouldn't be true. Zotero shouldn't use "Ibid" when there are intervening non-Zotero footnotes, and at least in my brief testing with 2.1 this seems to work.
  • II) it certainly could be done, but someone would have to do it. Everyone else here has an academic specialty that isn't programming, too. bdarcus is a geographer, I'm a political scientist etc.
    Unfortunately, the disciplines where people are most likely to throw up their hands and claim ignorance about 'programming' are also the ones that are most like to come up with the most onerous rules...
    Writing localization files, though, doesn't require any computing expertise - you literally just replace words and symbols - look at the German one here for example:
    https://github.com/citation-style-language/locales/blob/master/locales-de-DE.xml
  • "In a footnote style, this shouldn't be true. Zotero shouldn't use "Ibid" when there are intervening non-Zotero footnotes, and at least in my brief testing with 2.1 this seems to work."

    If I understand you correctly...

    If it wasn't true I would have had even a bigger problem - I have footnotes in the text with my notes, comments etc. but with no citations. A pair of footnotes later a have the previously cited work once again - with "Ibid." (the document is good formated, the footnote style is regularly used for footnotes). So, in my case it is true...
  • @adamsmith
    Maybe you have right... I'll give it a try these days. Thanks
  • Look, I'm a scholar who often does archival research, so I know the distinction in general. What I'm asking is about your particular understanding of it so that I can try to help figure out a general solution.

    It sounds to me like you're effectively talking about republished historical manuscripts. Is that fair?
  • edited April 25, 2011
    OK, I really appreciate it. But here I speak about simple citing of sources like Aristotle, Plato, Thomas Aquinas etc. Well, you cannot quote them in the usual way, as you quote for ex. some modern study on Aristotelian ethics. It is a standardized work, with a standardized numeration (of chapters, columns etc...) Take the Bible for ex. - you never write in the text which edition you used, year, place of publication etc. You don't eve write it is the Bible. You simple write: 1. Cor. 3,5 (that is 1. Letter of Apostle Paul to the Corinthians, chapter 3, verse 5) or Jn. 10,11 (for Gospel of Apostle John, chapter 10, verse 11). And there is no difference if it is the first citation or not. Only in the bibliography on the end you give the whole note with an info about the edition, place, year etc. I hope this gives you an idea about what is a primary source in my context.

    So these are not simply republished historical manuscripts - the manuscripts of the same work are compared from scholars (usually philologists), who make a critical edition of the work on the basis of the manuscripts. Generally, the philologist works with manuscripts, the systematical researcher (philosopher, theologian etc.) works with the editions edited by the philologists.
  • OK, so then you're talking about what other people describe as "classical works"? See:

    http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/9293/classical-citations/
  • Yes! That's the right topic!

    Still all the solutions there are only improvisations. It seems to me that the best and easiest solution would be simply to ad a new item type "classical work" (like "book", "book section", "manuscript" etc.) - that would cite only the short title and the numeration, and that would contain the whole information on the used edition in the bibliography. I think that the developers of Zotero should consider such an option.

    The last offered solution on the topic was to insert the notes manually (which I still find the easiest of all offered). But the "ibid." problem stays! Fbennet as well as Simon in this topic say that Zotero recognizes non-Zotero citations. There is obviously something that I don't understand correctly here:

    1. If every footnote is recognized as a citation, then it breaks the ibid.-connection to a previous cited work. That is a problem, because not every footnote contains a reference (it can be only a comment). In my case this doesn't work (and it is good that it doesn't work, because I have a lot of comment-footnotes without any references).

    2. Is it only the paragraph style "footnote" that makes the manually inserted reference recognizable to Zotero? If this is right, then in my case this definitely doesn't work. Do Fbennet and Simon here think of another way of marking a manual reference, that could be recognized from Zotero?
  • I'm primarily responsible for the citation styling language and some data export issues, both of which are independent of Zotero (used in various projects/contexts). So those are my concerns here. E.g. I'm looking at a longer-term and generic solution.

    A new type is one option, but I'm typically a bit leery of adding types. Is there anything (any little detail beyond type) that distinguishes these types of items consistently such that it could be embodied in a field (say on the existing book, etc. types)?
  • I am not sure if I understand your question. What do you mean by "any little detail beyond type that distinguishes these types of items consistently such that it could be embodied in a field"?
  • Just think if you can imagine some little change to, say, the existing Book type that would allow you to distinguish these items from a more generic book.

    For sake of argument, possible options:

    • a type selector with options like "critical edition" and/or "classical work"

    • a checkbox of some sort

    • ___________?

  • edited April 26, 2011
    Yes, certainly!

    1. Few notes on the topic "introductions" to classical works can be helpful. Many editions have usually long introductions (normally up to 100 pages), which are treated as separate research works. In this way you have two different item types within one publication: a peace of secondary research work (the introduction) and the primary source (the classical work). You have the "aparatus" (the notes of the editor on his edition of the classical work - normally in the form of footnotes). In this way you should insert the same book twice in the bibliography - once as a "book section", and once as a "classical work".

    2. The classical work practically functions as a kind of a "book section", but with citing rules, different from the standard ones for the "book section" type. In the final bibliography you need for both all the information on the used edition: author, editor, publisher, place, year... The bibliographical information for the reference "Met. IV (1003a, 21)" ("Met." in italic) should look like: "Metaphysics, ed. W. D. Ross, Vol. 1 (Oxford, 1924)" ("Metaphysics" in italic). The bibliographical information for the Introduction should look like: "W. D. Ross, "Introduction", in: Metaphysics, ed. W. D. Ross, Vol. 1 (Oxford, 1924)" ("Metaphysics" in italic).

    3. Therefore I think that adding a check box in the "insert citation" box with an option like "suppress everything but short title and make it valid for the first note as well" would one possible solution. The cited work will have the status of a "book section", but could be cited in a special way. On the other hand this is still an improvisation (!) (something better than the one with the editor).

    4. I prefer much more the option to make a new item type. It is simply better for the user: once you have defined it is a "classical work" you can cite directly without having to check the check box in "insert citation" every time you cite that source! It is more correct from the formal side as well: the "Metaphysics" is not a "book section" of "Metaphysics, ed. W. D. Ross, Vol. 1 (Oxford, 1924)", but is an edition of the very book (the classical work). The "Introduction" on the other hand is a "book section" of the used edition. I simply think that creating a new source type is an "once and for all" solution and would make Zotero better and more accessible for a large group of scholars who research the classical literature.

    I hope this comment helps.
  • 5. A compromise option can be a modification within the type "book section", some way to mark it as a "classical work" (for ex. through something like the "author-editor-translator-contributor..." box), which will practically "suppress everything but short title and make it valid for the first note as well" for all notes to be inserted from the work in general. In this way the checking of the check box (from the solution under 3. in the previous comment) on every "insert citation" will be avoided. From the practical side this should be an OK solution.
  • edited April 26, 2011
    6. The last option seems actually to be the best one. "Classical works" are often being published together in one book. So they practically function in every respect as "book sections" in relation to the publication. Adding a field/box (like the one described above under 5.) within the "book section" type with options like "Classical Work", "Research Paper", "Article", "Chapter", "Introduction", "Note" etc. can be a good Solution.
  • Any feedback?
  • Ask me again in a week or two :-)

    Obviously if others have thoughts in the meantime, that'd be good.
  • My thoughts only (also depends on input from Zotero devs like Dan Stillman):

    1. How is this relevant to the discussion per se?

    2. OK, but this will vary according to style. Again: don't see how it's relevant, except to note it needs different formatting. I imagine there may be similar issues with other (say legal) types.

    3. I wasn't suggesting a checkbox for the citation, but rather on the source (not sure what the value would be though).

    4. Maybe, but I'm still not convinced :-)

    5. See above.

    6. OK.

  • OK, I didn't expect from you to answer on every point. This points were a sort of "brainstorming" or "loud thinking", not "six options". Actually, it is only one option, that one on the end, i.e. Nr. 6. So, I am glad that you like it, but I would allow myself to ask you, what does your OK mean in exact terms? (Do you accept this solution completely? In how much time can an update of Zotero with this option be expected?)
  • OK only means I think that's a reasonable option to consider for CSL, Zotero, and the RDF import/export representation. I have no idea how long it would take to resolve and implement, but I doubt it'll be in the next month.
  • OK, thank you for the feedback and the willingness to help solving this issue. For now I stay on manual citations for the source-literature and I hope to have the chance to manage them with Zotero soon.
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