Terry's TMG Tips

Customizing Your Source Citations - Books

This page updated 18 Jul 2009

Version note: Applies to TMG 8 & 9

Ms Mills' book Evidence! provides some dozen and a half examples for citing books as sources. Her examples cover books by an individual author, by multiple authors, books of compiled records, multi-volume sets, re-printed books, and many more. The Mills templates produced by Wholly Genes Software include templates to reflect many of these examples.

But I've found in real life, my sources turn out to be much more mix and match – the book I use is likely to be a reprint edition of compiled records by multiple authors. So I ended up patching elements from several TMG templates together to accurately record my source. Finally, I concluded that an "all purpose" book template that would address all those possibilities was both desirable and possible. The following is the Source TypeI worked out.

Terry's All-Purpose Book Source Type:

The template allows for one or more "writers," for that writer to be an author, editor, or compiler, and to be either a person or an agency. Multi-volume sets and series, as well as revised editions and reprints are accommodated. All this is accomplished by including optional source elements, which are left empty if they do not apply. These empty elements will be ignored in the printed citations.

Technical Notes

• This template uses three custom source elements. While it would be possible to create it using standard source elements, the meaning is made clearer by their use. I created [WRITER ROLE] in the Editor group, [SECOND ADDRESS] in the Second Locations group, and [SECOND PUBLISHER] in the Second Person group.
• This template removes the "Hereinafter cited as . . . " phrase included in the usual TMG template - Ms Mills has indicated in messages on the TMG-List that this phrase is often not used today so long as the short title is clearly recognizable.
• For reprints, I include the original publisher information, which does not appear in Ms Mills book, on the theory that a researcher may want to consult the original edition if it can be found.
• For help with the procedure of creating a custom Source Type, see Creating a Custom Source Type.

Usage Notes

Writer – Enter the name of the writer in the Author field:

• If it is one person, enter in the form: Jones, John J.
• If it is several people, enter in the form: Jones, John J.; Jones, Susan Ann; Smith, Robert A.
• If is an agency or organization, enter (with no commas) in the form: Alpha Co. Historical Society
• If Unknown, enter: \[Anonymous\]

Edited or Compiled works – Enter in the Writer Role field:

• If by one writer, enter: editor or compiler
• If by more than one writer, enter: editors or compilers
• Otherwise, leave this field empty

Multi-volume works, part of a Series, or Revised editions – Enter in the Volumes field:

• If multi-volumes, enter the number of volumes in the form: 4 volumes
• If part of a series, enter the series name, for example: Carolina County History Series
• If a revised edition, enter edition in the form: 2nd Edition

Publication information – Enter in Publisher Address, Publisher, and Publish Date fields:

• If privately printed, enter in the Publisher field: privately printed
• If publication date, publication place, or publisher not given, leave those fields empty and the output will include appropriate notes that the information is missing

Reprint editions – Enter the publication information for the reprint in the Second Address, Second Publisher, and Second Date fields.

• If not a reprint, leave these fields empty and they will be ignored

Comments – If additional comments about the book are appropriate, enter them in the Comments field (on the Supplemental Tab) and they will appear at the end of the full footnote.

Downloading this Source Type

You can create your own Source Type using the suggestions above by copying the templates from this page into a new Source Type, editing them as you prefer, and creating the custom Source Elements. Or, you can download and install a copy of my Source Type using the Source Type Import function. When you do that the custom Source Type and the two custom Source Elements are created in your Project, ready to use. To do that:

1. Down load my custom Source Type file here: Terry's All- Purpose Book Source Type

2. You have a choice about where to save the file. You can save it in an easy-to-find location, such as on your desktop, and then locate it when you import it in Step 3 below. Or, you can save it in your TMG "Export" folder, which is were TMG first looks for it. I recommend that location if you might want to import the Source Type again into different Projects. The default location of the Export folder is shown below, but it may differ on your system if you have customized your file locations:

3. Open TMG, then use the Tools > Source Types menu command to open the Source Types screen. On that screen, click the Import Button, and on the Import screen that opens select the "terrys_book-all_purpose.xst" file. If you have saved it someplace other than the Export folder, you will have to navigate to that location to locate it. Click the Open button, and click OK on the dialog that opens. You should get a confirmation message that the new Source Type has been imported.

You are now ready to choose the new Source Type when you define new book Sources, or if you should want to change the Source Type of existing Sources to it.

For further details on exporting and importing Source Types, see my article Exporting and Importing Source Types.

Copyright 2000- by Terry Reigel