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The New York Historical Society website publishes several blogs as part of their larger website. I am trying to cite an article that is part of one of their blogs but am not entirely sure how to approach it. The article doesn't show an author. The blogs do not have their own url and are structured as categories on the site. I assume that the name of the blog should still be featured somehow, I'm just not sure where. Here's a link to the article. https://www.nyhistory.org/blogs/lets-be-thankful-may-day-doesnt-exist-anymore
And my attempt:
“Let’s Be Thankful May Day Doesn’t Exist Anymore,” blog post, 1 May 2014, New-York Historical Society Museum & Library (https://www.nyhistory.org/blogs/lets-be-thankful-may-day-doesnt-exist-anymore : viewed 1 August 2023) > Behind the Scenes.
Hello, Hendrickson. You're…
Hello, Hendrickson. You're off to a good start; but there’s one issue that will create confusion for your readers and one that would make it impossible to fit your citation into most software templates.
Issue 1: Why have you italicized the words in your specific item field? Italics are used to signify a standalone publication. The specific item field is designed to identify a specific spot or item within a publication.
Issue 2: Software templates don’t carry a date-of-publication field between the title of an article (or chapter or database) and the title of the standalone publication (book, journal, or website) in which that article appears. The publication date should appear in the parentheses that holds the publication place : date.
I suspect that you’re perplexed over the excessive number of elements, particularly titles, that could be cited for this blog post.
First, let’s deal with the fact that we don’t have an author. Dropping that field leaves this:
Now let’s deal with the repetition: If the host website carries the name of its creator, we don’t have to cite it twice in two different fields. (EE 9.6, p. 439, first bullet)
So which do we drop? Given that the blog itself has its own webpage from which all individual posts can be accessed, the blog can be the standalone publication in which the blog post (i.e., article) appears. That leave us with this
From this, we can create a simple citation, placing the creator’s name into its appropriate position before the Title of the standalone item.
1. “Let’s Be Thankful May Day Doesn’t Exist Anymore,” blog post, New-York Historical Society Museum & Library, Behind the Scenes (https://www.nyhistory.org/blogs/lets-be-thankful-may-day-doesnt-exist-anymore : published 1 May 2014).
Regarding the date, when an online article/blog post carries a publication or revision date, we do not have to cite the date on which we accessed it. The access date is used for undated articles to give a reference point that provides (a) some time frame for the article/post; and (b) a date we an use to relocate the article/post in the WayBack Machine, in the even that the blog is dropped from the web. (EE 7.25 under “Citing Date Information.”)
Thank you for unraveling…
Thank you for unraveling that for me. I was getting tripped up because I felt I needed to represent both the website and the blog as a publication.
As for issue #2, I'm a bit curious. I placed the posting date right after the blog name as in the example on p. 787 of the book. I hadn't intended to cite this in my software database. Does that change anything about its placement?
That said, in the software I use, I have the flexibility to put the date wherever needed So I guess I don't understand what you mean.
Thanks for pointing out EE 7.25, I hadn't thought to look there.
Hendrickson, I raised Issue…
Hendrickson, I raised Issue 2 because of the response I've had from software engineers to that example on p. 787. When the next revision of EE happens, whenever that happens, that example will be changed. In the meanwhile, if we're not constrained by software, that's a good thing!