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Archiver > TMG > 1999-12 > 0944176252


From: "Mills" <>
Subject: Re: TMG-L: Sourcing unpublished papers
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1999 17:10:52 -0600


Yesterday, in response to a query by Michelle , I wrote:

<An unpublished manuscript is not a book. . . . when italics are applied to
a source it instantly shouts *Published!* -- so that doesn't fit a
manuscript. The convention for handling the titles of unpublished
compilations is to place the title in quotation marks. . . . you should be
able to record all the necessary information and have it print properly by
using the Evidence! models for "dissertation," "research report" or
"thesis" -- or the Henry James Young typescript model under "marriage
record." All of these allow for name of author, title in quotation marks,
and varying amounts of location data.>

Lee responded:
<Am I missing something? Since the papers are more or less a book but are
unpublished, how about the "Diary or Journal (Manuscript)" or the
"Manuscript (Unfilmed)" categories. >

Yes, Lee, these can be adapted also, but I didn't cite them for Michelle's
grandfather's manuscript because they require a greater degree of
adaptation. To be specific:

(1) The Evidence! model for "Diary or Journal" (in manuscript) form, doesn't
have a field for author because the name of the author is part of the title
of the diary -- a situation that is frequently the case with diaries and
journals. Putting the compiler's name in both fields would be unnecessarily
redundant.

(2) The manuscript example to which you refer is a manuscript *letter in an
archives*, which means it is handled differently in several regards from a
*compiled account* in private possession (the situation posed by Michelle).
For letters, one usually cites both the writer and the recipient; and
there's usually no formal title to put in quotation marks, as in the case of
compiled acounts of their family that people write. When manuscripts are in
archives, they usually have a document number and are part of a formal
collection, both of which have to be cited. With privately held material,
this isn't the case.

The bottom line, of course, is that just about anything can be adapted to
fit just about anything -- so long as one recognizes (a) the important
elements that need citing for each type of record; and (b) the meaning of
certain typographical conventions such as italics v. quotation marks -- hich
you do, of course <g>.

Elizabeth Shown Mills


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