Citing front matter with no page numbers

the1gofer, let's go back to the starting gate on this one. You have a lot of details that do need to be recorded in this citation, but the sequence of the details in your draft makes it difficult to understand what you are using.

Your citation starts off saying you have used something. Normally, the creator of that "something" is the first thing cited. Therefore, your reader (or you at a later date after your recollection of this source has gone cold) would conclude from your arrangement that the creator was Allen County Public Library's Internet Archives, and that it is found at a website called Archives.org. I don’t think this is what you are meaning to say. Also at the end, you say "By James F. Smith, page ....; crediting Allen County Public Library..." but Smith isn't crediting ACPL. 

Let’s analyze what you have:

The map you are wanting to cite appears in a book. The book was later digitized and the page images are published at a website titled Internet Archives. (Archives.org is the URL.)

Therefore you have two things to cite: (1) the book. (2) the website that delivers the images. When we have two separate things to cite, with one standalone thing (a book) being found as part of a bigger standalone thing (the website), we cite them in layers.

In your copy of Evidence Explained, if it is the 3d edition or the 3d edition revised, you’ll find a “QuickStart Guide” on gray pages tucked into the start of the book. On the page headed “The Basics: Publications: Print & Online,” look at the last example on the page.  There is an example of a layered citation for a book, digitized online. That is the format you should follow for James F. Smith’s book that you found on the Internet Archives.

To put it another way:

• In layer 1, you will cite Smith’s book, using the basic book format—i.e., Author, Title (Publication Place: Publisher, date), page number, item of interest [name of map]. Then end this layer with a semi-colon. Don't use a period, because all the citation elements for the source belong in the same citation "sentence." (In your draft above, the part of the citation that says "by James F. Smith" should not carry a period before it. It should be in the same citation sentence as all that comes before it.) 
• In layer 2, (after the semi-colon) you will say imaged at ...  Then you will cite the website, following this same format. Then you can finish it off with that period.

Please note that the Allen County Public Library did not write the book and it did not create the Internet Archives at archives.org. ACPL provided copies of the book for the website Internet Archives to digitize. In that role, ACPL would not be part of your citation, any more than you would cite a bookstore where you bought a print copy of the book.

If you have not yet seen it, our QuickLesson 19 “Layered Citations Work Like Layered Clothing” should help you with these concepts.

For your dilemma that prompted your question, see the next message.

And now for your dilemma that prompted the question.  …

Until books began to be offered in both digital and printed form, the traditional way to number front matter was to use roman numerals. The numbering would start with the flyleaf, which would be counted as i and ii, the Table of Contents would be iii, the copyright page on the back of the Table of Contents would be iv, etc.  However, custom dictates that those roman numerals do not actually appear on title pages, copyright pages, tables of contents, or the start of an introductory essay such as “Preface” or “Acknowledgements.” If an essay is more than one page long, the roman numeral would appear on each “continuation page.” To make things more confusing, publishers sometimes have tipped in front matter (as with EE’s QuickStart Guide) that might affect the numbering.

All this is what is going on with Smith’s book. If you start counting with the Table of Contents and call it iii, as it usually is, then the backside is p. iv. The next page “Preface” is p. v, but it carries no roman numeral either because it is the start of an essay that is continued onto another page. There on the backside (glory hallelujah!) we actually find a page number: vi.  The next page, the start of the essay called “Foreword,” carries no number but it would be vii. On its backside (viii) the publisher forgot to put a number. The next page is your map of interest. Being a map, it does not normally carry a page number; but since we’ve been counting pages since p. vi, we know that it should be p. ix. So that's the page number you'd use. For clarity, given the situation, EE would say "unnumbered p. ix."

In your copy of EE, if you'll check the index for Numbers > page numbers, you'll find a variety of other situations showing how to handle "missing or irregular" numbers.

There’s also something you can do in Layer 2 that would help others who use your citation—and help you, if you later come back to the book. Remember the premise that websites, being standalone publications like books, are cited like books. For this website we don't cite a creator because it's eponymously named. We begin the citation with the title. Therefore, after we cite Title (Publication Place/URL : Date), we're at last field of the citaton where a book’s page number would appear. There, because we're citing the digital format, we would use image number rather than page number—i.e., “image no. 17 of 626.”

Great job, Jason! Just to finesse it a bit ...

Smith, James F. The Cherokee Land Lottery, Containing a Numerical List of the Names of the Fortunate Drawers in Said Lottery, with an Engraved Map of Each District. New York, Printed by Harper & Brothers,1838. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/cherokeelandlott00smit : 2009.

1. James F Smith, The Cherokee Land Lottery, Containing a Numerical List of the Names of the Fortunate Drawers in Said Lottery, with an Engraved Map of Each District (New York, Printed by Harper & Brothers,1838), unnumbered p. ix, for map "The Land Area of the Cherokee Lottery"; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/cherokeelandlott00smit : accessed 25 December 2017), image 17 of 626.

11. Smith, Cherokee Land Lottery, unnumbered p. ix, for map.

As explanations:

• Both book titles and website titles (each being a standalone publication) are italicized. (EE 2.22, 2d item)
• In American writing (text or citations), we capitalize every word of a title except articles and prepositions. This is called "headline-style" capitalization. (EE 2.22, 12.26)
• Amid sentences, the American rule for capitalization is to capitalize only proper nouns; therefore "digital" would not be capitalized in the middle of the sentence-citation that represents the first reference note above. (EE 2.59)
• In shortened "subsequent notes," we can also shorten those overlong titles. (EE 2.67, 12.21, 14.14)
• In shortened citations, when the title begins with "The" it is customarily dropped (as per 12.21, the Green example).
• When identifying the publisher, we don't have to say "printed by ..." or "published by." We simply cite the name of the publisher in that spot.
• In notes 1 and 11, that deal with unnumbered pages: because counting problems can happen with unnumbered pages, especially if publishers tip additional material into the front of the book, it would be best to follow "unnumbered p. ix" with an identification of what your reader should find on that page.