Questions on Biblios

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Posted by Ken Ashworth
Jan 6, 2007 at 06:44 PM

Although I was exposed to the fundementals of research, biblios, and footnoting back in High School (ages ago), I did not go to college and never had occassion to put this to use.

Now I’m running into a situation where it appears that a biblio may be the ticket for a particular project (personal), but am unsure how to structure the records for this particular task.

I am looking to catalog the works of a particular author, but the body of work is not as cut-and-dry as just cataloging the works that have been published.

For example:

Story-A has a Title given by the author, and the story is a completed work.

Story-A exists as a manuscript (completed, unfinished, or fragment) but was never published.

Story-A is submitted to several publications on known dates; publications may accept or reject, and an accepted story may or may not be published.

Story-A may be reworked to become Story-A-A, but retains the same Title (both versions of the story may still exist). Both versions may have been published.

Story-A maybe reworked to become Story-B, and has a new Title (both versions of the story may still exist). Both versions may have been published (in some cases in the same publication) at some point in time.

Story-A may be an incomplete work that has been completed (edited ???) by another author; the completed story may be published under the original Title, or under a new Title. Both versions may have been published under their respective Titles.

Story-A may be a completed work, published or unpublished, but is then re-worked (edited) by another author and published under the same Title or a new Title. Both versions may have been published at some point in time.

How do you show a story’s “linage” in a biblio?

If each version of a story is a record in the biblio, but the Title field is the same for all records, how do you differiniate records when choosing a record for citing? I realize that there are common fields for Edition or Version, but these fields are not always visible with the Title field.

How do you show a story’s history - composition, completion, submission, rejection, re-submission, publication?

I realize that things such as “type” of work can be shown as constrainted values of a field, for example, manuscript, article, short story, verse, unfinished, fragment, article…

I guess I’m looking for some insights into using biblios, a quick refresher course, or a discussion of best practices.

Later,
KenA

Posted by Graham Smith
Jan 6, 2007 at 07:19 PM

Ken,

I hope you aren’t looking for a simple answer to this, as best practice depends on the referencing style, journal, professional society, publisher etc. All of which are different.

Some hints on the Harvard system (including unpublished works) are at http://www.leeds.ac.uk/library/training/referencing/harvard.htm

However,I suggest getting a hold of some bibliographic software. Free ones like Jabref are very good. http://jabref.sourceforge.net/

They allow you to store the information and worry about the formatting later. They also generally give help with the information you will need to store. So when you choose to add a new entry, you select from a list of entry types, with the program presenting you with the appropriate fields that you need to fill in.

For the final production of the bibliography, you then tell the program the style you want and it spews out a correctly formatted bibliography. Or at least most of the time it does.

So you can leave the questions of formatting until later.

Graham

Posted by Ken Ashworth
Jan 6, 2007 at 08:40 PM

Graham,

Thank you for the quick response.

The Havard Link looks good and will take some time to digest completly. Also, this sub-link looks like it’s going to useful:

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/ROADS/subject-listing/service/01.1.html

Yes, I have downloaded JabRef and looked at the different styles it provides; this looks most promising.

But my concern is how does one track such things as submission history, or the morphing of a story from one thing to another - or is this not a function of a biblio.

I do have experience with constructing Relational Databases, and some of what I’d like to track seems better suited to the parent-child relationships available - but then I began to wonder if Biblio software would fill the bill.

No, I was not looking for any quick answers, but for insights, discussion and pointers that would help me and perhaps others.

Again Thanks,
KenA

Posted by Graham Smith
Jan 6, 2007 at 09:57 PM

Ken,

I suspect the best approach depends on what you want to see at the end. I would be tempted to use Jabref to keep the formal references and then some sort of outline/time to keep track of the histories.

You can link to a file from each reference in Jabref. If you had a time line/outline file (using an outline program, word excel or a proper timeline program) for the history of a particular set of references, you could then link back to that file from all the relevant references.

I am sure you could do something with a relational database, but Jabref already knows all about storing and managing bibliographic databases, so why repeat the work.

However, as I said, it all depends on what you want at the end.

Graham

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