Citing an image in a book

By Anonymous on Wed, 05/11/2016 - 20:08

Forums

Dear Editor,

I plan to use an image from a book. Unless I missed it, I didn't see any example for this in EE; but, here is a stab at it:

Format:

Artist Name, "Title of Art" [description], year, Book Title, Author, (publisher info), p. 99; Archive (web address).

All the above information is not always available, so for example (some of this is fictional for illustration):

William Smith, "Arrow Heads" [wood engraving], 1860, The North Americans of Antiquity, John T. Short, (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1880), p. 27; Internet Archive (http://archive.org : May 2016).

Any assistance with this is much appreciated (as usual)!

Submitted byEEon Thu, 05/12/2016 - 09:53

pbaum, the most basic question one might ask is this: How would citing an image in a book be different from citing any other page in a book?  The basic book format calls for

Author's Name, Title of Book (Place of publication: Publisher, Year), page number. 

This follows the basic pattern of largest element (the creator) down to smallest element (the page). If, on that page, there is something special we want to call our reader's attention to, then we add that data after the page number. The photo is smaller than the page, no? 

Following this format for your data would give us this:

1. John T. Short, The North Americans of Antiquity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1880), 27, for William Smith's 1860 wood engraving "Arrow Heads"; accessed Internet Archive (http://archive.org : May 2016).

Using this format,  "Master Source" in our database would be the author and the book. We could then reuse that citation for any other page we cite from Short's work. If we begin our Source List Entry with a reference to Smith, then that Source List Entry is not usable for anything else in Short's book.

Incidentally—on a nitpicking level—you'll note that no comma appears between the book's title and the parenthetical data that provides further details about that title. Parenthetical data is supposed to be attached to what comes before it. A comma creates a splice.

Submitted byACProctoron Thu, 05/12/2016 - 11:49

I'd like to mention a few "edge cases", just to illustrate how there isn't always a single formula -- I hope you don't mind. I'm sure you can add many more of these, but the following are based on my own experiences:

The image may not always have a page number. Often the image occupies a page of photographic quality that is skipped by the page numbering. Usually, it would have its own 'plate number', but I have one example that doesn't.

The image may have a title rather than a plate number. Also, the illustrator/photographer may be different to the textual author, and even better known

Tony

Submitted byEEon Fri, 05/13/2016 - 08:43

Excellent points, Tony.  In fact, when I posted a short version of pbaum's question, with a link to this site, I added an image of book pages that carried photos but no page numbers—wondering how many people would pick up on that fact. Twenty-four hours later, you're the only one who has mentioned it!