How do you define a series?

By Anonymous on Fri, 01/25/2013 - 13:28

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I've been wrestling with citations for microfilmed newspapers for quite some time.  In an earlier thread you pointed us to the QuickCheck model on p. 660, where the published microfilm was identified by its series title and not a film title.  So how do you determine what is a "series" vs. a film/volume "title" ?

I found some very detailed examples in EE 12.84–12.89, but I was still confused about how to define a series.  Also I didn't see an entry for "series" in the glossary.

As an example, I've attached a title frame from a published roll of microfilmed newspapers.  My inclination would be to treat The Western Sun as a series title (which wouldn't need to be repeated in the film portion of the citation as per 12.89) and the date range shown as roll identification that is not part of a proper title.  However, I could see how the large typeface of the newspaper name and dates could signify both as parts of the film's complete title.

Submitted byEEon Sat, 01/26/2013 - 12:18

bbailey73:

We'll answer this in two parts, starting with the question raised in your subject line: How do we define a series?  In citation terms, the word "series" means the same thing that it does in everyday life: It's a group of things that have some relationship to each other. EE 3.1 discusses "series" in an archival sense—the way it's used to organize original manuscripts. The pages you flagged in Chapter 12 discuss the concept from the standpoint of published works. If you have a digital copy of EE, you can search it for the word "series" and come up with many, many, many different permutations.

EE 12.84, to which you pointed, specifically says:

"Many agencies have issued special publication series—sometimes annually, sometimes on an occasional basis—that are indispensable to historical research. Most are rarely easy to cite. As a genre, they have complicated titles, titles within titles, a mixed-bag of publishers, and various subseries within the overall series. ..."

The microfilm publication you are citing has this complex stuff going on silently in the background, but the publication itself has a simple title that does not require any identification of a named series.

Let's break the message here, and treat the second issue separately.

Submitted byEEon Sat, 01/26/2013 - 12:24

 

bbailey73—Part 2:

Let's start by putting the earlier reference to p. 660 in context. In that discussion, we pointed out that citing the published microfilm edition of a newspaper involved two issues: (1) citing the original newspaper and the specific item; and (2) citing the microfilm publication. Regarding the second part of the citation, we state:

The QuickCheck Model on p. 660 demonstrates how to cite published film that reimages an earlier print publication. Again, [for the microfilm portion of your citation] just start at the semicolon and follow the example to the end of the sentence.

In that particular example, the title of the microfilm publication was Early English Book Series. That particular publisher has a number of microfilm series and it titles them accordingly.

The title page to the film that you are using (thank you for attaching it) makes no reference to a series. It's an ordinary microfilm publication, with a title (The Western Sun, Vincennes, Indiana; Weekly; Jan. 7 1910–Sept. 29, 1911) and publication data (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1964). You would then add any publication number and roll number that the publisher applied, just as we do with film published by the National Archives. (We could add here that the publication number UM gave to its Western Sun film would be the equivalent of a series number, and the roll number within that series would be the equivalent of a volume number, but that might confuse the issue here.<g>)