Church Publication

Brian, have you seen 7.26 "Church Brochures, Newsletters, Newspapers, Etc.?"

I’ll address your questions in two parts. First, we’ll discuss your citations. Then I’ll answer the three additional questions separately.

Your first example draws from 14.21, “Newsletter articles.” You choose the “citing like a newspaper” option and ask "Is the place of publication really relevant for this?":

W.H. Miller, obituary for Rebecca Funk in “Fallen Asleep,” Gospel Messenger (Huntingdon, Pennsylvania), vol. 31, no. 27, 11 July 1893, p. 430, col’s 2–3; image, Brethren Digital Archives (https://archive.org/details/brethrendigitalarchives : accessed 10 Nov. 2017).  (The Gospel Messenger is a publication of the Church of The Brethren.)

Yes, for newspapers. Their name alone often does not give us the "place" context that we need for localized news.

Then you give an example of citing the newsletter as a "journal" and ask whether it looks appropriate:

W.H. Miller, obituary for Rebecca Funk in “Fallen Asleep,” The Gospel Messenger 31, no. 27 (11 July 1893) : 430, col’s 2–3; image, Brethren Digital Archives (https://archive.org/details/brethrendigitalarchives : accessed 10 Nov. 2017).  (The Gospel Messenger is a publication of the Church of The Brethren.)

This is quite functional , but we could make a couple of tweaks to finess:

• When we cite a journal, we typically cite volume and date, but not issue number. Citing both the issue number and the date is redundant
• The standard abbreviation for “columns” (plural) is cols.  rather than col's, as above.No apostrophe. A period follows the abbreviation, as standard for all abbreviations.
• The useful explanation that you add as the last sentence does not need to be put into parentheses. Given that the citation itself has multiple sets of parentheses, putting parentheses around your own words adds a bit of confusion.

Brian, for your last three questions, I’ll paste them here and add comments immediately after each.

1.  When an article (like "Fallen Asleep," above) covers more than one column, should I cite only the column containing the item I'm citing (col. 3 in this case) or should I cite the columns containing the entire article (col's 2-3 in this case) or the column containing the start of the article (col. 2 in this case)?

The standard would be this:  p. 430, cols. 2-3.

2.   The Brethren Digital Archives are apparently hosted by Internet Archive.   I assumed it wasn't important to identify the host (except as part of the URL).  Is that appropriate?

Yes.

3.   There are several ways to get to the document I'm citing:  1) Directly through Internet Archive  (https://archive.org/details/gospelmessenger131150mill), 2) Navigating from the Brethren Church's own web page Brethren Digital Archives (https://www.brethrendigitalarchives.org/), 3) From the digital archives on Internet Archive (citations above).  I cited what I used, but is there a reason to use one of the other ways to get to the document?

Hmhh. If you were at a library and the book you wanted was on the third floor, but you had to go first to the catalog on the second floor to get the LC number under which it is shelved, would you feel it necessary to include second-floor and third floor in your citation?  The direct approach works just fine.