Re: entry type for medievalists

Jesse Billett <[email protected]> writes:

> Dear Bibulus users and developers,

Sorry for ignoring you for so long, but I have a day job to do as
well. :-(  I hope to get more time to work on Bibulus in the coming
months.

> [...]
> I study medieval history and liturgy.  Like all medievalists, many of
> the sources with which I work are medieval manuscripts.  These are
> referenced in bibliographies in forms similar to this:
>
> City, Library, Shelfmark
> e.g. London, British Library, MS Royal 2.A.10

Great -- a new entry type!!!

> For citations within the text, sometimes more information is
> necessary, such as referring to a folio number, taking the form
> "fol. 221", or "fols. i--x, 12--27."  (Medieval books are rarely
> numbered with pages, though this sometimes happens and would require
> an option.)

So apart from the normal pages and chapters, we have to add folios.
Fine.

> The first citation in a chapter would need to indicate the date of the
> manuscript, its place of origin, and often a standard reference work
> in which it is cited, and perhaps books where the manuscript might be
> edited, reproduced in facsimile, or discussed in detail:

How do you normally cite -- in footnotes?

> Florence, Biblioteca Laurenziana, MS Amiatino I, {\em CLA} III, 299:
> s. vii--viii (before A.D. 716), Jarrow or Wearmouth, Northumbria; see
> E. A. Lowe, {\em English Uncial} (Oxford, 1960), pp. 11--12,
> nn. 12--13, Plates VIII and IX; B. Bischoff, {\em Latin Paleography:
> Antiquity to the Middle Ages}, tr. D. \'{O} Cr\'{o}in\'{\i}n and
> D. Ganz (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 71 and 199.
>
> So this would require the following traditional BibTeX-style fields:
>
> Address:		Florence

Nothing new there, I guess.

> Library:		Biblioteca Laurenziana

New.

> Shelfmark:	Amiatino I (the MS prefix doesn't apply to all
> styles... needs to be optional)

New.  Would 'MS' always be inserted in some styles, or are other texts
possible?

> Pagerange:	[empty if all]

Fine.

> X-te:		s. vii--viii (before A.D. 716) [ "s" here is for the
> Latin "saecula", and refers to the centuries when the book might
> have been made]

Sorry, but what do you mean by 'X-te'?  Apart from that, I'm a bit
concerned about how to express 's. vii--viii (before A.D. 716)' in a
nice, consistent and language-independent way.  Any ideas?

> Origin:		Jarrow or Wearmouth, Northumbria

New.

> Standardref:	\CLA III, 299 % (use a macro for abbreviated names.
> This one is "Codices Latini Antiquiories", a standard ref. work)

Does this function more or less as journals do to articles?

> Edition:		[citation key for an edition of the manuscript]

Could you please exemplify?

> Seealso:		[pp.~11--12, nn.~12--13, Plates VIII, IX]{Lowe:1960}
> 			[pp. 71, 199]{Bischoff:1999}

Surely this is not part of the entry type, but part of the citation
(or an annotation in the bibliography)?

> I hope you might find this an appropriate entry type.

We most certainly need to define a new one for this purpose.

> It would certainly broaden the appeal of Bibulus.  I am in touch
> with an expanding circle of medieval researchers who have found
> LaTeX to be very useful.  This would help them a lot.  In the
> meantime, I'm looking into modifying the jurabib style to see if it
> might work.

I agree that jurabib is probably the best BibTeX-based option, but I'd
like to see Bibulus being able to handle this.

Thanks so much for your feedback!

/Thomas
-- 
Thomas Widmann          Bye-bye to BibTeX: join the Bibulus project now!
[email protected]                        <http://www.nongnu.org/bibulus/>
Glasgow, Scotland, EU     <http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/bibulus/>