Questions on EE 14.22 Newspaper Articles (Online Images)

1.  I was creating a source list entry for a the image of a newspaper article found at Newspapers.com and I was going to include the information about the website, as suggested in EE 9.6, when I saw that no such information appears in the source list entry at EE 14.22, bottom of page 808.  So now I'm confused when website information for online images should appear in source list entries.

2. The first reference note uses "image copy."  I'm not sure what the difference is between "image" and "image copy."

3. At the end of the first reference note is "Historical Newspaper Collection."  This is a database that has smaller databases.  One can find the article by performing a search in this collection database.  If I had not seen EE 14.22 I would have put Historical Newspaper Collection in quotation marks and put it at the beginning of the reference note, as is typically done for a website with multiple items by different creators.  Why is that typical reference note not used here?  Custom?  Is the fact that it's a collection database the overriding concern?

Submitted byEEon Mon, 10/12/2015 - 21:37

Newonash,

1. The image example at 9.6 deals with an online image of an unpublished record book from a county courthouse. We would not want to imply, in either the Source List Entry or the Reference Note, that we had used the original at the county courthouse because that online image may have been enhanced by the web provider to resolve all kinds of legibility issues. So, the web provider is cited in both the Source List Entry and the Reference Note.

The image example at 14.22 deals specifically with a newspaper article--the same material you are citing. That newspaper is published. Copies of published materials typically exist in many locales and they will be identical from one locale to another. Therefore, the convention for online citations of newspapers is for the Source List to cite only the newspaper. For newspapers accessed online, most researchers do want to include the identity of the website provider in their Reference Note, not just a matter of attribution but also a reminder of where it can be found online if they need to access it again. This difference in treatment between the Source List Entry and the Reference Note is not remarkable. Source List Entries are generic references. Reference Notes are almost always more explicit.

2. Whether you wish to use the word "image" or "image copy" is a matter of preference and one that may vary from one citation to another depending upon what suffices for clarity.

3. Either approach is fine. With regard to the particular example at 14.22, the provider has changed its collection title and path since EE3 was published in May. In fact, it has changed a number of its collection titles and paths since then, and deleted many image collections as well. As researchers painfully aware of the frequency of these changes, our challenge is to cite what we've used thoroughly enough that the material can be refound after these changes occur.