Book- Town Records

By TheCount on Mon, 10/11/2021 - 16:38

Forums

Good evening.

I'm a  little stumped on how to cite this book. I am mostly stuck I think, on the author/publisher portion. It's available at several online venues but to confuse matters, everywhere I look there are slight differences in how it is cataloged, especially when it comes to the author and publisher.

If I just go by what's on the cover, it shows that it comes with notes and an index by Charles R. Street. I'm not sure how his role should be shown in the citation but it's on the cover so I assume that he needs to be credited. The cover also shows that was compiled, transcribed and published by the Towns of Huntington and Babylon.

A stab at the citation gives me something like this:

Charles R. Street, contributor, Huntington town records, including Babylon, Long Island, N.Y., vol. 1 (Towns of Huntington and Babylon, New York: 1889); images, Hathi Trust Digital Library (https://hdl.handle.net/2027/pst.000013582364 : viewed 22 October 2021).

WorldCat lists the authors as Charles R. Street, Kenneth C. Butterfield and Rufus B. Langhans and the publisher as Huntington, New York, office of the Town Historian. Butterfield and Langhans are the Town Clerk and Historian. Haithi Trust lists Charles R. Street as the editor. It's also available on Google and Internet Archive, both with different details as well.

None of them include the dates that are on the cover as part of the title but I wonder if they should be. And 

I would appreciate your feedback.

Submitted byEEon Mon, 10/11/2021 - 19:38

TheCount, online cataloging data for books is a mixed bag, with Google Books and book dealers being somewhere toward the bottom of the bag. You are wise to first look to the publication details on the title page and its backside (the copyright page) —then to loc.org and/or WorldCat.org.

Discussing a standardized citation in this case is complicated by the fact that you are citing Vol. 1 but your link takes me to Vol. 3. I'll work with the data I'm eyeballing for Vol. 3:

[Philip Pearsall, Joseph A. Douglas, and] Charles R. Street,  Huntington Town Records, Including Babylon, Long Island, N.Y., 1776–1873, vol. 3 (Huntington & Babylon, NY: The Towns of Huntington & Babylon, 1889); images, Hathi Trust Digital Library (https://hdl.handle.net/2027/pst.000013582364 : viewed 11 October 2021).

I put Pearsall and Douglas in editorial brackets because they do not appear on the title page but are the town officials credited on image 11 (and likely at WorldCat also, as Butterfield and Langhans are for Vol. 1). Charles R. Street's identification as supplier of "Introduction, Notes and Index" does not suggest that he was the primary compiler or transcriber of the records.

Submitted byTheCounton Tue, 10/12/2021 - 10:25

Thanks for clarifying that and sorry about the link to the wrong volume. I will be using all 3 volumes at some point.

Taking a closer look though the WorldCat version I was referencing I think is a revised edition in 1981. When I selected "View all editions and formats" in World Cat it gives Charles R, Street at the author for the original volumes and Huntington, NY as the author for the e-books on Google, Hathi Trust and Internet Archive. So WorldCat doesn't credit Pearsall and Douglas.

Not sure if that makes any difference.