Zotero: Tricky Situations

• Some books are republished versions of older books -- often exactly the same content, but with a different publication date and often a different publisher.  The most common example is an ebook, which may show only the date the ebook was published, even if it is an exact replica of an earlier print book.  Since you will be including primary works in your bibliographies, it is entirely possible that you will encounter this situation. 
  • A good and simple example of this is:
    • Fleming, James Rodger. (1998) 2020. Historical Perspectives on Climate Change. Oxford Scholarship Online. New York: Oxford University Press.  https://alliance-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/91ddl6/CP71195095620001451.
    • The ebook was published in 2020 and is the version I used.  But it is an exact replica of the print, published in 1998.  The data that Zotero gets from the library catalog only knows about the 2020 date.  But the library record does have an additional field that indicates the original publication date (sometimes you will need to look at the publication date in the frontmatter of the ebook).  So, in the Zotero Extra field, I need to type:  original-date: 1998 
      • Note:  I can still type my annotation in the Extra field after the date code.
  • Confessions of an English Opium Eater is a much more complex example.   Imagine you have in your hand the 1971 print edition from Penguin.  Confessions was originally published in two parts in a magazine in 1821.  It was published as a book in 1822, but with a few small changes.  A 2nd edition, again with a couple of minor changes, was published in 1823.  the next few editions apparently had no changes from the 2nd edition.  But the 1856 edition was substantially reworded and expanded.  So, what publication date do you use?
    • You do need to cite the date of the publication that you consult.  In our imgainary case, 1971.  But you should also include an original publication date in the Extra field. Which date?  1821, the true first appearance?  1822, the true first book version?  1823, if the version you used shows the changes specific to the 2nd edition?  1856 if the version you used is based on the expanded and reworded 1856 version?  There may be an exactly correct answer to this.  But I say, read the frontmatter in the version you are using, possibly including the foreword, preface, or introduction, to see what is said about versions.  Then cite the edition you are consulting, plus the original date that makes the most sense to you (which in Zotero requires the original-date:xxxx trick in red above).

In Chicago (Author-Date) style, the official Chicago Style page shows two different ways to cite issues, as you can see from these examples taken from that site:

Zotero outputs only the style shown in the LaSalle citation.  However, Chicago Style prefers the other format when a month or season is available (see 15.9, and 15.47 in the print version of The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed).  It seems likely that either is fine, in the end.

In our library catalog, translators and editors are often (always?) tagged as "contributor", and this is how they appear in Zotero.  However, in APA style, for example, translator, editor, series editor, and contributor are each handled differently.  So although the default is "contributor", you can change the default by clicking the down arrow next to the "Contributor" label (image here).  

IN order to show how APA handles these different types of 'contributors', below I have changed the role of the translator (Elliott) in order to show the different renderings in APA.   In the 3^rd  one, I designated Elliot as “contributor”.  In the last one, I designated Elliot as a “series editor”, and he disappeared from the citation.

Fassin, D. (2024). Moral abdication: On consent to the obliteration of Gaza (G. Elliott, Trans.; Updated English-language edition.). Verso.

Fassin, D. (2024). Moral abdication: On consent to the obliteration of Gaza (G. Elliott, Ed.; Updated English-language edition.). Verso.

Fassin, D. (with Elliott, G.). (2024). Moral abdication: On consent to the obliteration of Gaza (Updated English-language edition.). Verso.

Fassin, D. (2024). Moral abdication: On consent to the obliteration of Gaza (Updated English-language edition.). Verso.

Usually, only one city is listed as place of publication. But there can be two or more.  I have not found a definitive answer to this, but most people who have commented on this issue agree with Frederica:  pick one. Either the first listed, or the one that seems most relevant to you (geographically?  I don't know).  So if Zotero imports more than one place of publication, you can edit that Zotero field by deleting all but one location.

In the 18th edition (Fall 2024), place of publication is usually no longer required!

Scientific names in journal article titles should be italicized, but will not be by default.  You can make them italicized by manually editing the article title field.

Place <i> before the term to be italicized, and </i> after.  You are all set.  You may not see the change  in your WordPress bibliography for  5-15 minutes (and remember to refesh the page the bibliography is on).

Book titles are italicized by default, but scientific names in book titles should be un-italicized (or reverse italicized).  The same tags (<i>, </i>) will accomplish this for scientific names in book titles.

In the 18th edition (Fall 2024), it appears that it may no longer be recommended to un-italicize scientific names in titles . . .  will clarify here soon.

Still working on this one!

However, if we begin with the idea that a key factor in citation is that the reader could locate the same source with the information your citation provides, then it should be adequate to follow the logic and format described here:  https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Documentation/faq0395.html

This example from CMOS doesn't say whether it is using Author-Date format, or N&B format.  And the format doesn't look quite like either one.  So, just do your best based on this.

However, in the case that prompted this question, the sketch artist is different than the author/editor of the book the sketch appears in.  Shouldn't that artist be included in the citation?  And if so, how?  Don't worry about that for now.  Information about the sketch artist doesn't actually help the reader find the source.  You could include the name of the sketch artist in your text, however, and probably should.

When you cannot identify an author (common on web pages), you have two choices.

1. Leave the author field blank.  The title will become the lead in the citation, including for purposes of alphabetization.

2.  Identify a 'corporate' author.  Here are two examples provided by the Chicago Manual of Style:

Google. 2017. “Privacy Policy.” Privacy & Terms. Last modified April 17, 2017. https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/.

Yale University. n.d. “About Yale: Yale Facts.” Accessed May 1, 2017. https://www.yale.edu/about-yale/yale-facts.