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I am working on a person who was an ordained minister in the Protestant Episcopal Church in North Carolina. A great deal of historical information about his years of ministry is found in the various Journals of the Annual Convention published after each convention. All of the Journals, at least for the years covering his ministry, are available as images on The Internet Archive (Archive.org).
Since the Journal is published in book form, I started there. See the attached image for a copy of the title page of one Journal. My proposed reference note for a particular citation from this journal is:
Protestant Episcopal Church (North Carolina), Journal of the Forty-Fifth Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of North Carolina Held in Grace Church, Morganton, On Wednesday July 10, Thursday July 11, and Friday July 12, 1861, (Fayetteville, North Carolina: Edward J. Hale & Sons, 1861), 22; digital images, The Internet Archive (https://archive.org : accessed 19 June 2014).
Is the reference note proper as constructed? (I would really like to omit everything in the title starting with “Held in …” since the book can be quickly identified by the convention number (the search parameters I used on Archive.org did not need to include the location information to uniquely find this particular journal,) but I suspect that 12.21 would earn me a polite slap on the wrist if I tried.)
This brings me to the real heart of my dilemma. His ministry lasted for over 50 years, and I may have citations from a large number of journals. My question is how to form my Source List entry. The fact is that each individual title is unique – the convention number changes, the place changes, and the date changes. But they are all “Journals of the Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of North Carolina” for a period of years. Can I have a single Source List entry for all of these Journals, even though the specific title changes from year to year? For example:
Protestant Episcopal Church. Journal of the Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of North Carolina. 1858-1874. Digital images. The Internet Archive. https://archive.org : 2014.
Protestant Episcopal Church. Journal of the Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of North Carolina. 1875-1919. Digital images. The Internet Archive. https://archive.org : 2014.
I do believe I need two Source List Entries rather than one to reflect that the journals change from “State of” to “Diocese of” starting in 1875, but otherwise do these suffice, or am I off base? (And in case you or another reader may be wondering, I am intentionally omitting the challenges associated with the Civil War period, as well as any arising from the two splits of the Diocese into new Dioceses. I believe that I can handle those once I get the basic formats in order.)
Thanks!
Tom,
Tom,
Given your comment about 12.21 (Shortened Titles), you may be shocked by our response. You can indeed simplify your citation to all those annual publications of the Protestant Episcopal Church in North Carolina.
You correctly surmise that even though this publication has the word "journal" in its title, it's not cited like academic journals, wherein we cite Author, "Article Title," Journal Title, vol. no. (Month Year): page. Rather it is cited like a book.
EE 12.84–12.91 deals with "serial publications" that are issued like books. The simplest way to cite them, if we use just one out of the whole run, is simply to cite what's on the title page—which you were kind enough to attach. In situations such as yours, in which (a) you are going to be citing a number of the volumes; (b) the titles vary slightly from one year to the next, and (c) authors and publishers vary across time, the easiest explanation is to say you are going to have to "wing it."
Actually, you're going to have to do what you're already doing: learn the basics of a citation, thoughtfully consider the details that vary across time, and try to address any special quirks.
Assistance, in cases such as this, can be found in the catalog of the Library of Congress. I do not find there a catalog entry for the NC series, but it does have an entry for the SC counterpart. I'm appending an image of its treatment of that series. As you can see, LC handles the whole as a serial and creates one cataloging entry for the whole. Where the titles of each individual entry begin as
LC uses an ellipsis to replace the ever-changing ordinal and reduces the whole to
In your main Source List Entry, you could also use that ellipsis to replace the words "state" and "diocese" so that one Source List Entry will suffice.
Protestant Episcopal Church. Journal of the ... Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in ... North Carolina. 1858–1919. Digital images. The Internet Archive. https://archive.org : 2014.
Your Reference Notes might then say:
Protestant Episcopal Church, Journal of the ... Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in ... North Carolina ... 1861 (Fayetteville, N.C.: Edward J. Hale & Sons, 1861), 22; digital images, The Internet Archive (https://archive.org : accessed 19 June 2014).
Protestant Episcopal Church, Journal of the ... Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in ... North Carolina ... 1878 (Fayetteville, N.C.: Different Publisher, 1878), 100; digital images, The Internet Archive (https://archive.org : accessed 19 June 2014).
And, of course, any time you repeat a citation to a volume you have already cited in full, then you can give a standard short citation such as
Protestant Episcopal Church, Journal of the ... Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in ... North Carolina ... 1861, 22.
All of this does leave one further issue for you to deal with. If, at input, you reduce the problem to a single Source List Entry, which would be standard at output stage (i.e., publication time), then—in your working stage—how are you going to maintain a record of what publisher and place of publication applies to each individual year?
I used to tell new members of
I used to tell new members of my staff when I was working that "the only dumb question is the one you don't ask." I was so close to not posting this query, because I was "sure" I knew the answer! Sigh. At least I decided to take my own advice.
Thank you for your response and your advice. Sometimes my instinct is to "wing it" when I can't find the exact answer, and it is good to know that occasionally that is a good instinct. The reference to the Library of Congress is especially helpful, as well as your suggestions.
I am left with one question.I noticed that in your revised version of the Reference Notes, you suggest that I continue to use the ellipsis that is used in the Source List Entry, rather than writing out the specifics, such as "Forty-Fifth." I expected that the Reference Note, at least the First Reference Note, would need to be more exact in its detail, so I was surprised to find it also simplified. Is the reason for doing it this way so that it is consistent in form with the Source List Entry, or is there another reason that this is an acceptable form? (I am not complaining, I am just confused!)
Thanks!
Oh, and to answer your
Oh, and to answer your question to me which I forgot in my original reply, I am keeping track of the full information you noted in my research notes. Plus, I have a downloaded copy of each journal on my hard drive for that invariable time when I need to go back to the source to look for "one more detail."
Tom,
Tom,
In citing very long titles such as this one, we are allowed discretion as to how much of it to use. This is analogous to situations in which we have many authors, as frequently seen in science journals; we have to name one, we might name two or three, but seldom would we name, say, seven or eight.
A decision to truncate a long title would depend upon how much of the trailing words are needed to exactly identify the book. EE 12.57 and 12.59 also addresses this from the standpoint of nineteenth-century city directories, where titles of two or three dozen words are not uncommon. EE 13.9–13.13 address it from the standpoint of annually published legislative acts, which also tend to carry long titles.
Both city directories and acts passed by legislative sessions are also forms of serial publications that are issued annually or so, with virtually similar titles.
That makes sense now - thank
That makes sense now - thank you! (Now I have to file this away for my Act of Parliament pertaining to another ancestor!)