Wikipedia talk:The Wikipedia Library/Archivists/Citation

example on the project page and other comments
It would seem sensible to me for the examples at §Example markup and §Displays as: (probably should be only one section, right?) to be written so that the skeleton contains values. This so those of us unfamiliar with what the parameters mean can see how they are ultimately rendered. For example, I can guess that these match: but the rest, I'm fuzzy on.
 * Correspondence to George Ade
 * May 8, 1924
 * Letter
 * West Lafayette, Indiana

When choosing the names of the parameters used here, you might consider adopting names that match similar usage in and. For example, is there another date used in this template that requires disambiguation? date, publication-date, archive-date, access-date are some used in cs1|2. In cs1|2 the functional equivalent of itemformat is type.

In cs1|2, titles of published works are either quoted – chapters, articles – or italicized – book titles, journal titles. Is the value in item properly rendered quoted?

Have you considered non-Latin languages? Surely archives aren't limited to languages that use Latin scripts only. Non-Latin languages should not be italicized; some, Hebrew, Arabic, etc. are right-to-left so require special treatment.

I've raised some of these issues because cs1|2 cast a rather large shadow. Those templates are used in a lot of pages. Editors familiar with cs1|2 parameters will be happier if the parameters used in are similar.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:25, 28 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Another useful resource is Help:CS1 errors, which describes various kinds of errors that editors make when editing citations. For example, what will your template do when a URL is provided and a name in the title parameter is wikilinked? You can't link both. The CS1 citations flag this condition as an error. Similar errors are generated for invalid dates, unsupported parameters, unnamed parameters, and more. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:46, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

I think your first two comments has now been addressed? I'm not sure what we need to do with regards to non-Latin languages, and I believe item name is appropriately quoted. Is there anything else to clarify or do in order to get the template coded? Cheers, Nikkimaria (talk) 02:03, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Sort of. What I wanted to see was something like this where I've taken the example parameter values from §Proposed fields:


 * Here is the 'displays as' example:
 * Tarkington, Booth. "Booth Tarkington letter to George Ade" (May 8, 1924) [Textual record]. George Ade Papers, 1878-2007: Correspondence, ca. 1882-1947, Correspondence, Sto-U, ca. 1894-1943, Tarkington, Booth, ca. 1905-1943. West Lafayette, IN: Virginia Kelly Karnes Archives and Special Collections Research Center, Purdue University.
 * From that I can assign this display order and punctuation:
 * last, first. "item" (date) [type]. collection: series, box, file. location: repository, institution
 * which raises these questions:
 * What about the items not included in the example: item-id, page(s), fonds, oclc, accession? Where are those positioned in the rendered citation?  What markup or punctuation accompanies these parameters?
 * Is a comma the correct separator for the series-box-file parameters?
 * In the example rendering, collection (#13 in §Proposed fields) is linked with item-url (#4 in §Proposed fields). That can't be right can it?
 * Which parameters should not be rendered when another parameter is omitted or empty? For example, it makes no sense to render type when item is missing.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 13:19, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Last, First. "item" (date) [type]. Collection, fonds: series, box, file, itemid, page(s). location: repository, institution. OCLC. Accession.
 * Yes - more often these are numbers only. Perhaps it would make sense to include the label? Series Correspondence, ca. 1882-1947, Box Correspondence, Sto-U, File Tarkington, Booth, ca. 1905-1943.
 * No - collectionurl with collection, itemurl with item.
 * When there is no item, omit itemurl, type, itemid, pages. Other than that, I think the rest should be included if filled. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:30, 13 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Produces this HTML:
 * and renders like this:
 * In general acts and renders like cs1|2, (but is not a cs1|2 template). It does not have the same error checking nor does it emit metadata. Supports as many authors as you care to provide, author masking, author linking, etc.  Can render in both cs1 and cs2 styles (not simultaneously); can be the target of a  or  family templates.
 * In general acts and renders like cs1|2, (but is not a cs1|2 template). It does not have the same error checking nor does it emit metadata. Supports as many authors as you care to provide, author masking, author linking, etc.  Can render in both cs1 and cs2 styles (not simultaneously); can be the target of a  or  family templates.
 * In general acts and renders like cs1|2, (but is not a cs1|2 template). It does not have the same error checking nor does it emit metadata. Supports as many authors as you care to provide, author masking, author linking, etc.  Can render in both cs1 and cs2 styles (not simultaneously); can be the target of a  or  family templates.


 * It needs documentation. I'll leave that to someone who knows what all of these parameters really mean.  The documentation page is Template:Cite archive/doc.


 * Undoubtedly there are bugs or other things that need tweaking. For those, post here or on the template's talk page.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 22:10, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Additional issues to ponder
Two things are on my mind concerning the template.

1. The template begins (as with most WP citation templates) with last= first=. What does one do in the case of 1) Corporate entities; and 2) Family entities, e.g. "Smith family"? What about corporate entities that are subgroups of larger identities, such as (I'm making this up) "West Point Marching Band" - which would be a within West Point's records?

2. What about archives that are not equipped to deal with detailed processing? Is the template ok with institutions that could only fill in a minimum of information, such as name of institution and archival collection? - kosboot (talk) 01:51, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
 * In other templates this is handled by either last or a separate author parameter; in most cases here corporate entities will be in either repository or institution
 * Yes - only a couple of parameters are required, most are optional. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:06, 15 March 2016 (UTC)


 * WRT to Question 1: If I'm understanding the original Q correctly, the issue being flagged here would/could be teased out using the Series parameter. Often with organizational records child or departmental relationships are split into Series headings - so in this case, the West Point Marching Band series would sit beneath the West Point fonds (in Canada we use 'fonds' to refer to papers/records that other country's refer to as 'record groupings') parent entry, positioning the Band as the 'creator' or 'author' despite it never being flagged that way. Alternatively, I guess that this issue could also be addressed by the introduction of a 'Creator' parameter, which from an archival standpoint can mirror the 'author' parameter with books, journals, etc. Dnllnd (talk) 01:07, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Yes, regarding no. 1, Dnllnd has the issue. When a corporate entity is the creator, there should be a way to identify this.  repository or institution are not sufficient because the corporate records may not be the same as the owning institution (libraries and historical societies typically have numerous collections of corporate entities that have no connection to the owning institution).  - kosboot (talk) 01:38, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Okay. We could simply write into the documentation that when a corporate entity is the author it should be entered under last. Or did you have another approach? I don't know that we need a displayed (corporate author) signifier, for example. Nikkimaria (talk) 21:21, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
 * So long as it's displays clearly when the creator is a corporate entity, preferably in a manner similar to individual creators. - kosboot (talk) 21:23, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I've added to the documentation, see what you think. Nikkimaria (talk) 21:39, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I've been following the article of which is the talk page. Where is this documentation? - kosboot (talk) 22:04, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Template:Cite archive/doc. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:23, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you! I think it's good!  Brava! - kosboot (talk) 02:44, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

I made a template for citing archival metadata...
Hi, before I found out about this template, I made one for citing (non-open) archival metadata, mostly based off another, similar one. The one I made is Template:Cite archival metadata. I think the main difference is that in the Cite archival metadata template, you can list the findingaid authors, and since its use is confined to the metadata, it lets readers know where exactly the information came from. Do you have any thoughts on the subject? Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 17:27, 18 April 2016 (UTC)