Request: user control over what is included in bibliography

[dialectician]

Jon suggested to raise this issue in the forum to see what others think.

I would like more control over what references are included in the bibliography. Specifically, I would like to link references in such a way that when reference A, B, and C are cited in the document, only reference A is included in the bibliography. This function seems useful to me when citing multiple sections or books from a multi-volume work or from Collected Works. It would also be useful when you cite multiple chapters from an edited book, but you only want a single entry to the book in the bibliography. Let's say I have the following three references:

1. Aristotle. The Complete Works: The Revised Oxford Translation. Edited by Jonathan Barnes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.
2. Aristotle. On the Soul. Translated by J.A. Smith. Edited by Jonathan Barnes. The Complete Works: The Revised Oxford Translation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.
3. Aristotle. Metaphysics. Translated by W.D. Ross. Edited by Jonathan Barnes. The Complete Works: The Revised Oxford Translation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.

I would like to cite references 2 and 3 in the notes, but I only want reference 1 in the bibliography. Currently, the only way to do this is to cite 1 and 2 by copying formatted citations into the manuscript. That's not a very elegant solution because it means that the user has to do a lot of manual legwork.

As an alternative, I suggest to use the new Link function to let users decide how linked references are cited. In this case, I would set 1 as the parent reference and I would like the option to decide to ONLY include parent references in the bibliography. This could be implemented on the level of the format (e.g. citation tab), so it wouldn't have to be part of the metadata of the references. I think this might be quite useful for a number of users, but it would be helpful if people chime in. Thanks.

[ozean]

Hm, I see your point – especially with the example that you give.

To give an example for my field: I guess people would like to see all the different texts of Husserl (is he only using late Husserl? or also some early Husserl?) that I have used listed separately in the bibliography and not only give one reference to “Husserliana, 24 volumes”. I guess the reason for this is that the bibliography is not only used to look up and find specific references (for example to order them in a library) but also to get a quick glance at what works have been used in the text – i.e. it is used like a strange kind of abstract.

This is even more important with edited volumes that have completely different authors – it wouldn’t tell my “bibliography glancers” much about my work if I only put in a reference to an edited volume that has contributions from 20 completely different subfields. Also, it diminishes the importance of those contributors that are not editors…

As you see, my reasoning is based on observations of the ways in which people use a bibliography for all kinds of different purposes, and not only for retrieving the required information to find a work that has been cited somewhere in my text. Your mileage may vary, of course

Also, with most of the publishers in my field, in-text and in-footnote citations are kept very brief (i.e. usually only author-date), which makes it necessary to have a bibliography that gives more detailed information.

[Jon]

As an alternative, I suggest to use the new Link function to let users decide how linked references are cited. In this case, I would set 1 as the parent reference and I would like the option to decide to ONLY include parent references in the bibliography. This could be implemented on the level of the format (e.g. citation tab), so it wouldn't have to be part of the metadata of the references.

Do you mean the Bibliography Options tab? Something like "Cite the linked parent (if available) in the bibliography"?

Jon
Sonny Software

[dialectician]

Do you mean the Bibliography Options tab? Something like "Cite the linked parent (if available) in the bibliography"?

Yes, that would be a good implementation. Maybe "Cite only linked parent (if available) in the bibliography". The other (more complicated) option would be to let users specify the behavior depending on user-specified link types. (E.g. only cite parent for link type 1, but cite child for link type 2). But that would probably be quite confusing and more difficult to implement.

To give an example for my field: I guess people would like to see all the different texts of Marx (is he only using late Husserl? or also some early Husserl?) that I have used listed separately in the bibliography and not only give one reference to “Husserliana, 24 volumes”. I guess the reason for this is that the bibliography is not only used to look up and find specific references (for example to order them in a library) but also to get a quick glance at what works have been used in the text – i.e. it is used like a strange kind of abstract.

I see your point, which is why it's important (as Jon pointed out to me in an email) that this feature not be implemented on the level of the metadata, but in the format. That would still give you the option to cite all references in the bibliography. In my case (using Chicago-style footnotes), I often find that giving the detailed indication in the footnote is sufficient.

[JAMiller6620]

I would also find this to be a useful future feature.