(Bibliography: Notes for the FOTW-ws editors)

Last modified: 2003-07-18 by antonio martins
Keywords: bibliography |
Links: FOTW homepage | search | disclaimer and copyright | write us | mirrors

• Why Bibliography pages?
• What are FOTW-ws.BIB codes?
  • Authorship trigraphs
• Which are “valid” entries?
• What to do?

• Editorial guidelines main page
• Main bibliography page
• Bibliography: What’s new?
• List of missing data

Having (accidentally) taken the editing of these pages in Jan. 1998 from Guiseppe’s original bib.html (Oct.1998 version still on line here and localy mirrowed here — 53 entries!), I “interpreted” and developed his system as follows:

1. All bibliography references (articles, periodicals, books and other) will be listed in a separate section of a BIB page, followed by any comments about that item posted to the list, edited in the usual manner.
2. The contributions considered will be added to the BIB pages if they are explicitly of bibliographical nature («this book is the worst in its kind!»); any other subject will be edited in the relevant page («this book shows the Cagalhonian flag upside down» will go to the xx-cglh.html editor).
3. To prevent quarrels between adepts of different bibliography notation systems and to be friendly to our less learned visitors, all entries will have it’s specifications (author, title, pages, date etc.) listed in a “verbose” way.
4. All entries will be identified by a five (or six, or seven) character code, typically consisting of three letters from the author(s)’ name(s) (or title, for periodicals), two digits for the publish year and, if needed, a last distinctive letter (or pair of letters).
5. When creating new pages, in order to keep them under 32 kB, all old pages will be kept as a relink pages, from wich will be deleted the not-used-anymore links, thus preventing broken links.

António Martins, 20 Aug 1999 and (updated) 22 Jun 2001 and 27 May 2002

Well, the idea is that any new information about each entry will be added to the BIB pages thus centralizing all we know about a given source. This is not only practical for those researching sourcewise (instead of just bumping into a bibliographical reference every now and then on the pages), but also prevents unbalanced, partial and repeated bibliographic references from being added when a source is quoted in more than one intance (often case).
António Martins, 17 Jan 2000

I’d like to insist on the need to have all relevant sources listed and linked at our BIB pages, and I let you know that, as of 1999.07.30, only 310 out of 3250 pages at FOTW-ws had links to bib.html!
António Martins, 20 Aug 1999

The [xxx99zz] codes (xxx as author or author complex, 99 as two-digit year, plus zz as an optional untier when both the previous are the same) are simply supposed to be unique identifiers of each bibliographic entry — they could be serial numbers or random strings etc. The present system was inherited by me from the previous editor (and was utlimately devised by Giuseppe, I believe) and I found unwise to change it to anything else (back then we had 40 entries, now we have 3000…). At any rate, the codes should, or at least could, be transparent to the typical user.
António Martins, 13 Nov 2001

It was reccomended that the supposedly cryptical references of the type [abc99] should not be shown on the pages. About this I have a remind and a warning: First that I never said that the [abc99] should be added to the page instead of the title and/or author name and/or date, but along with it. And second that if we refer to the entries without the [abc99] (which is unique) we will (in my humble opinion) have problems, namely in what concerns old targets and relinks to the new location… But I dont insist in this or that way of presenting the links to BIB — I’ll just be happy if the links are done at all.
António Martins, 20 Aug 1999 and (updated) 27 May 2002

Authorship trigraphs

Authorship trigraphs (of which we have currently 2044, used in 4263 codes) are the most important part of the unique ID code of each of our BIB entries. As the name implies, it’s made of three letters (from the usual 26-letter modern latin alphabet) typically taken from the author name(s) or periodical’s title. There are two main types of these thrigraphs, plus a number (4) of “provisional” types:

1. Author name trigraphs, which may refer either to a single (1a.) author or to a “complex” (1b.) of several (see note bellow); the year indication is always present, even if unknown date ("XX" in lieu of the usual two digits). Right now we have 1521 individual author trigraphs and 209 collective author trigraphs.

   Note: Author name trigraphs refering to a group of authors will always refer to the same group, nor minus nor plus anyone. Ex.: Funny Flags from Fanfaronia (1998, by J.Doe, J.Dee and Th. Butler) and More funny Fanfaronian Flags (1999, also by J.Doe, J.Dee and Th. Butler), may be coded [ddb98] and [ddb99], but Yet more Funny Flags (2002, by J.Doe and J.Dee only) or Guide to Fanfaronian Flags (2002, by J.Doe, J.Dee and S. O. Else) cannot share the trigraph [ddb] because the group of authors is not the same.

2. Periodical title trigraphs, which are used to tag periodicals (may have a year indication — see [flm71], but usually the nude trigraph is used). Right now we have 99 periodical’s trigraphs.

Provisional trigraph types are those used in entries which ideally once will be changed to author name trigraphs — these refer to entries whose authorship is unknown. We have four types of these:

1. those with absolutely unknown author; 133 of these, right now.
2. as above, but with shared codes — in those cases where the authors of two or more sources are, though unknown, supposed to be the same. Ideally each of these codes (68 right now) would be changed to a single, definitive code of type 1.
3. those about which is known that there’s more than one author (the information «several» is given) — we have 11 such codes.
4. same as above, but the code is used in more than one entry, thus creating a series. Only thee of these ([ghc], [icv], [udk]).

When the author name(s) is(are) not known the trigraphs are improvised on whim, usually based on the title and/or publisher (usually I tend to prioritize combinations starting with less used letters, to balance the size of the individual BIB pages, hence so many "Q"s… ;-)

Provisional types 3 and 4 (several authors) may never be changed to a type 1 trigraph, as many times an entry consists of independently written articles with little or no compilation work to be credited for, and in a series of such entries (type 6) the author may vary from a number to the following.

And a final word: this system being based on the concept of authorship make it dependent on the “enforcement” of that notion in a case-to-case basis: Authorship is not a straightforward concept in many situations, so your mileage may vary. I can only say that, as editor, I rely on the information passed on by contributors, and I actually got to see very few of those 4263 entries.

António Martins, 19 Aug 2002

If your page says «I saw this flag on an article about the presidential elections in Perdunistan in my local newspaper», it is not of interest for BIB, but

1. articles or similar about flags in non-vexillological sources,
2. articles or similar in vexillological sources, and
3. vexillological sources themselves,

If the quote says only «In an article on Banderas», the only thing to do is link it to bib-baa.html#ban; the same if the quote is more detailed «In an article on Banderas, number 66, pages 4-5». But if the quote is more complete, say «On the article “Les armoiries et le drapeau du Territoire de Krasnodar”, issued on Le cabinet des drapeaux communique…, number 9/97 of 1997.04.19», it may be linked to the periodical, bib-caa.html#cdd, but also a specific bib entry for the article should be used: bib-kaa.html#kda97.

António Martins, 20 Aug 1999 and (updated) 22 Jun 2001

What to do when you have to edit (or re-edit) a contribution including a bibliography entry not yet listed at our BIB pages? Simple: just send me the relevant info and propose the code yourself (make sure that it is not in current use); in most cases I will accept it (only not if two editors propose at the same time the same code for different entries!), add the reference to the page and upload it to Rob in a week. And that’s all!
António Martins, 20 Aug 1999

Every time an editor find in his pages vex sources not linked to the BIB pages, (s)he is supposed to check the BIB pages and link the source reference to the appropriate location at the BIB pages. If the info at the BIB pages is incomplete (comparing to what is on the edited post), the editor should drop me a line for update of the BIB pages.

If the refered source is missing from the BIB pages, the editor is supposed to drop me a line saying something like this:

> Hi, Antonio! I just found this on my page se-jamt.html:
>
> «Eivind Torp: "Jämtlandsflaggan - ett uttryck for regional
> identitet?", in _Fran falttog till folkfest: Nordiska flaggor,
> fanor och symboler_ Uddevalla: Lacko Institut, 1993»
>
> I linked it to [tor93]. Also, on the same page:
>
> «Hallvard Tratteberg: "The Coat of Arms of Norway", American-
> Scandinavian Review, Vol 52, No. 2, 1964, pp. 134-146»
>
> I linked it to [trt64]. Please confirm. Regards,

Please note that the editor is supposed to propose the […] codes in order to reduce the delay in activating the link, I’ll refuse it only in the seldom case when the same code was proposed for a different entry after the BIB pages were updated (i.e., in a month time).

Please note that the proposed new codes should follow the current use, with the same three letters for the same author and with diffrent three letters for new authors (that’s why Tratteberg above is [trt] and not [tra] — the later stands for the already listed Tracchia).

António Martins, 17 Oct 1999

Ideally, each entry would be complete with the following:

• BOOK:
  • code
  • title
  • language(s)
  • (main) authors
  • [sec. authors]
  • [title in english]
  • [remarks]
  • publisher (name and place)*
  • publisher (country)
  • date
  • edition number
  • [original edition] (code; linking to that entry) **
  • number of pages
  • [index codes]***
  • format | height and width
  • thickness
  • weight
  • [FOTW-ml contribution(s) about entry]
• PERIODICAL:****
  • code
  • title
  • language(s)
  • [title in english]
  • [remarks]
  • publisher (name and place)*
  • publisher (country)
  • date ("published since …" or "published from … to …")
  • number of issues per annum
  • (average) number of pages
  • [index codes]***
  • format | height and width
  • (average) thickness
  • (average) weight
  • [FOTW-ml contribution(s) about entry]
• ARTICLE (in a vex. source):
  • code
  • title
  • language(s)
  • (main) authors
  • [sec. authors]
  • [title in english]
  • [remarks]
  • source title (linking to the relevant PERIODICAL)
  • source number
  • date (source date)
  • pages
  • [FOTW-ml contribution(s) about entry]
• ARTICLE (in a non-vex. source):
  • code
  • title
  • language(s)
  • (main) authors
  • [sec. authors]
  • [title in english]
  • [remarks]
  • source title
  • source publisher (name and place)*
  • source publisher (country)
  • source number
  • date (source date)
  • pages
  • [FOTW-ml contribution(s) about entry]
• CHART (same fields as BOOK, except for number of pages and thickness)
  
• OTHER (all appliable fields of BOOK, plus medium description)

• In square brackets "[…]", info to be added only when appliable.
• Pipe "|" separates exclusively optional info.
• * to be futurely split in two fields.
• ** the edition from this was revised and/or translated, not necessarily the first.
• *** including ISSN and ISBN, but also national systems, like the U.S. LoC index.
• **** vex sources only.

Many of the entries, however, are very incomplete, and I set up a hidden page listing all "?"s of the database, at bib!miss.html, so that they can be easily chased away.
António Martins, 20 Aug 1999 (upadted) 27 May 2002