Citing Newspaper Clippings

November 16, 2004 9:51 AM

When writing a research paper, how do you deal with bound volumes of newspaper clippings? Some of the clippings themselves have no information on them, while others have all of the identifying information (what newspaper it actually came from, date, etc. etc.). My problem is not with the info on the clippings themselves (god knows I've dealt with that before), but the fact that the bound nature of the clippings creates a new "source" in and of itself. I'm not sure when to reference the fact that they came from the bound volume. Help me librarians/researchers/fellow grad students!

I think I may be making this more complicated than it is in my head, but I will be happy with any responses that either verify that or show me something I hadn't thought of.

posted by stefnet to Writing & Language (4 answers total)

IMO, it's not a new "source" unless the collection was independently published. So if it's an ad-hoc collection of newspaper clippings, and not a separate publication, just cite to the original newspaper.
posted by PrinceValium at 11:11 AM on November 16, 2004

Response by poster: Ok. Just for clarification, this is a bound volume with the title "Onondaga County Court Houses" compiled, bound, and housed by the Syracuse Public Library local history dept. My thought was that I would just cite the original newspaper when possible, but for some of the more sketchy articles that have very few details, I would reference the bound volume just to provide a pointer back to the location of the original source.

It occurs to me that I wouldn't even be worrying about this if it was a manila envelope full of clippings, but the bound nature of it threw me a bit.
posted by stefnet at 11:30 AM on November 16, 2004

If this is a research paper for school, supply as much info as you can and add a parenthetical explaining who owns the clipping and where it can be found. If you're submitting it for publication, you might have to dig a little deeper to get the complete citation. Check also to see if Lexis-Nexis has your source, since citations to Lexis are appropriate if the print version is unavailable.
posted by PrinceValium at 11:46 AM on November 16, 2004

Cite it like you would a vertical file.
posted by trondant at 9:06 PM on November 16, 2004