Sonny Software

I would like to suggest that the default behavior for "duplicate reference" be to create a "book chapter" when duplicating an edited book. In other words, if you have an edited book, the duplicated reference should: (a) change the type from "edited book" to "book chapter," (b) move the title to the "book title" field, (c) remove all attachments present in the original, (d) if the editor is in the author field (as is often the case when the book data is imported from Amazon or other online databases), move the author to the "editor" field.

So, for instance, it will be easy to go from:

Sanjek, Roger, ed. 1990. Fieldnotes: The Makings of Anthropology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

to:

Jackson, Jean E. 1990. "I Am a Fieldnote": Fieldnotes as a Symbol of Professional Identity. In Fieldnotes: The Makings of Anthropology, edited by Roger Sanjek, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Obviously, these changes can be done manually after duplicating a reference, but I find that I am often creating chapter entries from the same edited volume and I believe that this change to the default behavior would make life just a little bit easier for everyone.

What do you think?

Luhmann wrote:I would like to suggest that the default behavior for "duplicate reference" be to create a "book chapter" when duplicating an edited book. In other words, if you have an edited book, the duplicated reference should: (a) change the type from "edited book" to "book chapter," (b) move the title to the "book title" field, (c) remove all attachments present in the original, (d) if the editor is in the author field (as is often the case when the book data is imported from Amazon or other online databases), move the author to the "editor" field.

So, for instance, it will be easy to go from:

Sanjek, Roger, ed. 1990. Fieldnotes: The Makings of Anthropology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

to:

Jackson, Jean E. 1990. "I Am a Fieldnote": Fieldnotes as a Symbol of Professional Identity. In Fieldnotes: The Makings of Anthropology, edited by Roger Sanjek, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Obviously, these changes can be done manually after duplicating a reference, but I find that I am often creating chapter entries from the same edited volume and I believe that this change to the default behavior would make life just a little bit easier for everyone.

What do you think?

I think you describe routine steps we all go through, of course, but wonder whether to provide automation for this sort of not-so-difficult tasks would not lead to bloat and, ultimately, to a sluggish and unyieldy application…

I am not talking about adding a new feature (bloat) but changing the default behavior of an existing feature. Would you prefer the already existing "duplicate reference" entry behaved in this way or not when copying an "edited book" - it will remain the same when copying a "book chapter" or other entries.

UPDATE: Although I see from the poll that a number of people would prefer adding this feature in a different way. Could anyone offer a suggestion for how they would like to see this added?

I see from the poll that a number of people would prefer adding this feature in a different way. Could anyone offer a suggestion for how they would like to see this added?

I voted for this functionality implemented differently. Here's why.

In another thread I tentatively raised the possibility of Bookends treating edited books and their chapters in a smart way, so that if there are chapters from a book in a bibliography Bookends would truncate reference information for each chapter and include the book in the bibliography as well. Currently all of this has to be done by hand after the generation of the bibliography by Bookends. It is the same, I think, with other reference manager software.

To implement this would require that Bookends knows which chapters belong to which book. One way of getting this information into Bookends would be to have a 'Create chapter' command which does the things Luhmann proposed for duplicating edited books, and additionally creates a hierarchical link between the book entry and the chapter entry.

Nicka,

Interesting idea, but it strikes me as somewhat unusual, simply because in my discipline bibliographies are not supposed to be formatted in this way - each chapter is treated as a separate entry according to the author, not the book. I have not seen bibliographies formatted in the way you suggest.

I only meant that it could be an option, in preferences or in the bibliography format.

Also, I think I wasn't clear about what I meant. In this format, each chapter is still listed by the author(s), but instead of full bibliographic details for the book appearing with each chapter's entry in the bibliography, the book is also listed separately. Here's an example:

Bilgrami, A., & Rovane, C. (2005). Mind, language, and the limits of inquiry. In McGilvray (2005a) (pp. 181–203).
McGilvray, J. (Ed.). (2005a). The Cambridge Companion to Chomsky. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McGilvray, J. (2005b). Meaning and creativity. In McGilvray (2005a) (pp. 204–22).
Rai, M. (2005). Market values and libertarian socialist values. In McGilvray (2005a) (pp. 225–39).
Smith, N. (2005). Chomsky’s science of language. In McGilvray (2005a) (pp. 21–41).

The thread where I mentioned this before, with Jon's response, is here: http://www.sonnysoftware.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=800

I have seen a lot of bibliographies formatted this way -- apart from anything else it can save space if a lot of chapters from one book are cited.

Still, it's only a tentative suggestion.

I'd like to support the idea of Luhmann here. In the humanities (or at least history) we need to cite the full title details of the edited book when mentioning a chapter from it the first time. So i like the idea and if it could be an option somehow that would be good.

Gerben

I'm inclined to handle this by adding a menu Refs -> Replicate Into Book Chapter (better wording welcomed) that will be enabled when the reference window is in front and the Type is Edited Book. These keeps the current behavior and adds an option for those who would like this feature. What do you all think?

Jon
Sonny Software

Sounds like an excellent idea!

I will think about the wording

Jon wrote:I'm inclined to handle this by adding a menu Refs -> Replicate Into Book Chapter (better wording welcomed) that will be enabled when the reference window is in front and the Type is Edited Book.

yay!

How exactly would it work? Where would the book title go in the new Book Chapter reference?

I don't know if I am doing things as they should be done, but when I create a "Book Chapter" reference, I normally type in "Title" field the title of the chapter, and in a secondary title field the book title.
Would your option "send" the book title to a secondary title field (leaving the main title field blank to be completed), or it would just produce a copy of the reference with another reference type (Book chapter)?

Hope I am being clear enough…

Well, I thought the following:

Edited Book Title -> Book Chapter Book Title

The Book Chapter Title field would be empty, for you to fill in.

If Luhmann (or others) have other mappings, just post them here for discussion. But I think most are pretty obvious (e.g. Editors would stay where they are in the new reference, Volume would move to User14 (the drawer), while Pages would be emptied. I'll think about the other fields when I actually get around to doing this (soon, if there is a consensus here).

Jon
Sonny Software

Well, if this feature is going to be implemented via a new menu option (and I cannot but cheer), then I propose to go all the way in this path and implement nicka's suggestion as an additional option within this new menu option.

Granted Jon's point that there is a point of diminishing returns in implementing every conceivable arbitrary way people invent for citing titles, I would point out that nicka's suggestion is NOT an out-of-the-way arbitrary feature. It is part of, for example, the MLA [Modern Language Association of America] Style Manual. They present it as optional, but a number of journals using their style make it mandatory. And the pain involved in manually tweaking references to meet this requirement, which affects many scholars out there in the field of literary studies, could be relieved by this extra nicety in the new menu. Thus, I think, the new menu option would become really powerful; it would take BE one big step forward in versatility as far as formatting reference lists goes.

Here is what the MLA Style Manual says on this:
"Cross-references. To avoid unnecessary repetition in citing two or more works from the same collection, you may create a complete entry for the collection and cross-reference individual pieces to the entry. In a cross-reference, state the author and the title of the piece, the last name of the editor of the collection, and the inclusive page numbers. If the piece is a translation, add the name of the translator after the title, unless one person translated the entire volume. […] If you list two or more works under the editor's name, however, add the title (or a shortened version of it) to the cross-reference."

Jon wrote:Well, I thought the following:
[…] Volume would move to User14 (the drawer), while Pages would be emptied.
Jon
Sonny Software

Would it not be possible to send Volume to whatever field shows the label Volume (and not, necessarily, to User14) under Book Chapter ? This would allow for the possibility that different users may have mapped fields differently. For example, under Book Chapter, I have maintained Volume in the same place it occupies under Book, but I have moved Series Title to User14.

frvs wrote: Here is what the MLA Style Manual says on this:
"Cross-references. To avoid unnecessary repetition in citing two or more works from the same collection, you may create a complete entry for the collection and cross-reference individual pieces to the entry. In a cross-reference, state the author and the title of the piece, the last name of the editor of the collection, and the inclusive page numbers. If the piece is a translation, add the name of the translator after the title, unless one person translated the entire volume. […] If you list two or more works under the editor's name, however, add the title (or a shortened version of it) to the cross-reference."

I agree that MLA and journal style guides are not arbitrary feature requests and should be taken seriously; however, it seems clear that we are talking about two different things here. The first is a way of managing the database - making entries from new ones. The second is a way of generating bibliographies. The difference is that this second feature requires that a book chapter KNOWS it is a chapter of an existing book. I don't know the underlying code of Bookends, but I suspect that implementing this would be far more complicated than simply changing the way references are duplicated. So while I agree it should be considered seriously as a future feature, it isn't clear to me that the two features necessarily need to be linked. For instance, if he decides to add this feature, Jon might implement it at the point where bibliographies are scanned (he could match book titles of book chapters to edited volumes included in the bibliography), in which case there would be no need to do anything extra during the process of copying a citation.