Forums
I referred to EE §14.12, but I still have questions.
Wisconsin Session Laws Including All the Acts and Certain Joint Resolutions (Racine: Wisconsin Farmer Co., 1947), pp. 451-453, Chapter 316; imaged, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3831043&seq=461).
1) Will "Chapter 316" suffice, or should I provide further description?
2) The publication information on the title page (image 5 of 1386, located here: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3831043&seq=5) shows "Madison, Wisconsin," but the next image shows "Wisconsin Farmer Company Racine, Wisconsin." Which of these is "correct"?
Hello, mbcross. While EE4…
Hello, mbcross. While EE4 does cover legislative acts and session laws, it covers only the individual acts. The compilations, such as the one you're citing, is simply a book. They are cited like any other book.
Question 1:
As with any published source, how much your reference note says about the content depends upon what's needed. If your text has discussed a specific point and that point is easy to find on the page you've cited, there's no need for the citation to repeat the details. If your text is more general and you wish for the citation to specifically call attention to a certain part of the text, you might say, for example:
... pp. 451–53, Chap. 2, Sect. 2. 2010 (2).
Question 2:
As a rule, with publications, we take our title, author's name, and publishing detail from the title page, if it appears there. Sometimes the publication data is relegated to the back side of that page. In this case, we see all the essential details on the title page.
The reference to "Wisconsin Farmer Company, Racine, Wisconsin, that stands alone on the reverse is the identification of the printing house. When a publisher is cited, we do not also need to cite the printer.
There is one quirk with this source, which is likely the root of your question. The title page does not specifically identify a publisher. Instead it says "Published by Authority." This is a Wisconsin state government publication. If you place there the name of the printing house as the publisher, "Wisconsin Farmer Co.," that does not convey the sense of authority, does it?
There's also an additional issue you did not question. The title is exceedingly long. Most of the verbiage relates to the date. If we shorten the title to omit all that, we lose the essential details about the time frame in which the laws were passed. Citing just the year of publication is not sufficiently explanatory because the book covers two sessions, two years: the 1946 session and the 1947 session. With most works of this type, the same main title is used for many volumes, with the distinguishers being in the long subtitle. Therefore, if we cite just the main title, but our narrative discusses session laws across some years, then we'd end up citing umpteen books with the same title, with nothing distinguishing them but the year of publication (which would not be included in a subsequent citation) and the page number.
On the latter subject, see
EE4 8.13 (unpublished registers) "Shortened titles, when used ... must clearly differentiate between similarly named volumes in a series."
EE 13.21 (published books) "When an author or compiler issues multiple books with similar titles but differing dates, the shortened title should include those dates to distinguish that book from the others of similar title."
Given the complexity of the session/date details, an Evidence Style citation might summarize those sessions and dates, putting the summary in editorial brackets
Wisconsin Session Laws Including All the Acts and Certain Joint Resolutions [Special Session, 1946; Biennial Session, 1947] (Racine: Published by Authority, 1947), pp. 451-453, Chap. 316; imaged, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3831043&seq=461).