Sonny Software

I read about an issue with duplicates in the Citation List on the Mellel forum. The scenario used there is not the one that I use, but I also come across duplicates (not in the database, but in the bibliography). My case is this: I enter data for a book in a new reference. When I do detailed research and find something in that book that I want to cite, I copy the original reference and use the field User1 to enter the pages that contain the info I want to cite. I have created a format for in text citations, that displays that field, and use another format for the bibliography (that does not display that field).

This works fine for me but for the bibliography that is created afterwards (and perhaps for the use of ibidem, haven't tested that yet). The bibliography will contain the original book as many times as I have referred to it using different pages. This is logical, I realize that, but would it be possible to have an option in the bibliography formatting where you can specify when a reference should be considered a duplicate and thus not included in the bibliography? This is ofcourse a different matter from identifying duplicate references in the database.

It is no very big problem for me to scan a bibliography after it is created and remove those duplicates manually, but automation of such tasks would always be nice.

Regards,
Adelheid

Hi Adelheid,

If you use custom citation formats and "Ibid.", Bookends will create a new citation every time. But we made a change in 7.7.5 that (I think) changed the behavior with regard to making duplicates in bibliographies.

But the problem here isn't anything to do with Bookends' logic. As I understand it, you create a new reference for each citation, differing only in the pages cited. To Bookends, of course, these are *different* references, and so listed individually in the bibliography.

The solution is simple -- have only the one reference in your database, and use the "quote" capability of Bookends in your citations. For example, after a scan:

{Adelheid, JM, My Book, 2004\, p. 14}

may resolve to

(Adelheid, 2004, p. 14)

You can use the backslash at the beginning and/or end of a citation:

{\as reviewed in \Smith, RR et al., 2004\, p. 12-14}

may resolve to

(as reviewed in Smith et al., 2004, p. 12-14)


You may want to refer to the User Guide for more details.

Jon
Sonny Software

Hi Jon,

I did see that option. I preferred the reference duplication however, because I couldn't work out a convenient way to register all those pages within that single reference AND to be able to quickly locate that particular page when I need it. With duplicated references, I can give each reference its own keyword.
I will try to find a way to work with your suggested method, because I do see problems with my solution, whenever I would have to change format, so...

In the Mellel forum however, the method you suggest was used, but this apparently also generated duplicates in the bibliography. I didn't try it out yet, will do so today.

Regards,
Adelheid

Adelheid wrote:In the Mellel forum however, the method you suggest was used, but this apparently also generated duplicates in the bibliography. I didn't try it out yet, will do so today.

It didn't generate duplicates in the bibliography, it generated "duplicates" in the citation list that Mellel keeps in the Bibliography palette (actually, they differ by page and therefore are not really duplicates, but they do refer to the same reference work). This is internal to Mellel, and does not affect the bibliography. What Toma asked for (on the Mellel list) was to have the list of citations in the Bibliography palette contain only one entry for each reference work, regardless of the number of times it was cited using different pages. That's an option that the Mellel folks will have to deal with (or not), and is independent of the bibliography that Bookends generates.

Jon
Sonny Software

Just tested adding the page number in the reference. Indeed, no duplicates in the bibliography.

Time to change my methods I think.