Variations and nuances

By Anonymous on Sun, 10/11/2015 - 13:15

Forums

There are many variations and nuances in EE and I'm often unclear whether the use of one word or another is a personal preference (part of citation being an art) or flows from a significant difference.  I'm unclear as to whether "consulted as" in the second reference note in EE 2.33 adds anything.  At first glance, it seems to me that deleting the two words leaves a perfectly good citation.

Submitted byEEon Sat, 10/17/2015 - 16:11

Dennis, as an experienced researcher who understands the layered-citation concept, you already understand the parts of this complex citation, even without those two words "consulted as."  For others who are learning the complexities of citation, it's a useful explanation.  (It's also useful for researchers to remember that most people who read our citations will not be experts.)

The explicit topic of EE3's 2.33 is the concept of layering citations. It provides a background discussion, and then illustrates the principles with an example that clearly delineates each of the three layers. I'll quote from the large passage here:

"Many citations to digital sources will be layered citations. The simplest websites—a blog, for example—mayhave one sole creator who produces original narrative, in which case there is only one source to cite and only one layer is needed. ...

"Other websites provide digital or abstracted versions of materials that originated elsewhere, either as manuscripts or print publications. Thorough citations to those materials require us to identify two or three separate items:

  •  the derivative that we are using—the database, the set of abstracts, etc. (See boldface in the example below.)
  • the image that the database provides—if images are provided for our use. (See normal type in the example below.)
  • the source of our source—to whatever extent we can identify it by the details our source gives. (See light-face in the example below.)

"The citation to each entity represents a layer. In a reference note, all are placed into one 'citation sentence,' with semicolons separating the layers. As this example illustrates, a multilayered citation to an original
document imaged online can be lengthy. The temptation is great to seek a briefer version. However, omission of any layer means we will not capture all the elements needed to analyze the quality or nature of the material being cited.

       1. City of St. Louis, Missouri, Circuit Court Case Files, case no. 6, William Clark v. Nicholas Brazeau (Nov. 1809), writ of Copius ad Respondum in Trespass, 24 July 1809; consulted as “St. Louis Circuit Court Historical Records Project,” database with images, Missouri Secretary of State, Missouri Digital Heritage (http://stlcourtrecords.wustl.edu/index.php : accessed 4 September 2014), search term: “Nicholas Brazeau,” image 2 of case file; citing Office of the Circuit Clerk, City of St. Louis.

In this example, the phrase "consulted as" helps the reader of the citation understand what details describe the original document and what details describe the website.