Maddening City Directories

FIRST QUESTION.

Is the year part of a directory title?

When the title page has something like:

The                                                                                                                                                             Everett                                                                                                                                                       Directory                                                                                                                                                    Containing                                                                                                                                                  Alphabetical List of the Inhabitants and Business Firms.                                                                                1906.

I think of the title as including the year, and therefore I would put "The Everett Directory, ... 1906" in my reference note.

What about when the year is at the very top of the title page:

1886.                                                                                                                                                               Everett                                 Directory,                                                                                                                                                   of the                                                                                                                                              Inhabitants, Institutions, Manufacturing Establishments, Business, Societies, Business Firms, &c.

It still seems okay to me to treat the year as being part of the title and, thus, having a reference note that includes "1886 Everett Directory" (eliminating the period after the year).

But what about:

1908.                                                                                                                                                       The                                                                                                                                                             Everett                                                                                                                                                       Diretory [etc.]

"1908 The Everett Directory" just doesn't look right.  What would you suggest in this circumstance? "The [1908] Everett Directory"?

SECOND QUESTIONS

It seems as if the past city directory publishers changed titles ever so slightly almost every year just to annoy us.  That leads me to ask several questions.

I saw in EE 12.56 that if the directories "have the same compiler and publisher across a span of years, with slight variation in titles, you might use this approach:

Source List Entry

Jones, John Q., compiler. Badlands City Directory, with Listings for Adjacent Wetlands, Marshlands, and Arid City [varying subtitles]. Badlands: Jones Press, 1924-27."

Since I can't find those books online to see what the actual titles are, I can't tell whether you are indicating (1) that Badlands City Directory, with Listings for Adjacent Wetlands, Marshlands, and Arid City is at the beginning of all the titles, with following subtitles that vary, or (2) that Badlands City Directory, with Listings for Adjacent Wetlands, Marshlands, and Arid City is essentially the complete title of the directories (title and subtitles together) with the actual words varying, your having chosen one of the complete titles as a representative title or your having used some of the words in all the book names to come up with a representative combination sample.

1. Long and short of it, if I wanted a citation that was similar to your suggestion, i.e., that didn't just say Everett Directory, but had some of the rest of the words in the titles of the directories below, how would I do it in an effort to combine the following (differences being shown in bold):

1891. Everett Directory, of the Inhabitants, Institutions, Manufacturing Establishments, Business, Business Firms, Societies, &c.

1886. Everett Directory, of the Inhabitants, Institutions, Manufactring Establishments, Business Firms, Business, Societies, &c.

1884. Everett Directory, of the Inhabitants, Institutions, Manufacturing Establishments, Business, Societies, Business Firms, &c.

The Everett Directory, for the Year 1908, of the Inhabitants, Institutions, Manufacturing Establishments, Business, Business Firms, Societies, Etc.

2. For purposes of EE 12.56, when do directories have the same compiler?  Can I treat W.A. Greenough, W. A. Greenough & Co., and Greenough & Co. as the same compiler? If so, what would I use in the citation?

3. May one do a combination as in EE 12.56 if the digital images are from different websites? For example, is the following citation acceptable:

The Henry M. Meek Publishing Co., The Everett Directory (Salem, Massachusetts: The Henry M. Meek Publishing Co., 1904), 241; also subsequent years by the same title: (1906) 265, (1908), 289; entry for Gilman C. Hickok; digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 3 November 2012) (1904) and Google books (http://books.google.com : accessed 28 October 2012) (1906, 1908).

Thank you taking the time to read through such a lenghty post.

Dennis