Explanatory section for New Zealand BUGS bibliography and database

This document is a slightly modified version of the explanatory section originally published in the Bulletin of the Entomological Society of New Zealand 11, February 1992, ISSN 0110-4527 and on the Silver CD-ROM `BUGS' on- disc (J. A. Jasperse, editor), September 1992, ISBN 0-908654-43- 0.

This version was prepared by Trevor Crosby, 31 March 1996.

Ramsay, G. W.; Crosby, T. K. 1992. Bibliography of New Zealand terrestrial invertebrates 1775-1985, and guide to the associated information retrieval database BUGS. Bulletin of the Entomological Society of New Zealand 11: 1-440.

Explanatory section -- Bibliography

The bibliography is an authoritative listing of all available literature in the public domain relating to the non-marine invertebrate fauna of the New Zealand subregion. It also includes literature from regions adjacent to New Zealand when this is of value to New Zealand users (particularly literature concerning mites). No value judgements have been made concerning the quality and status of the information in the literature sources: this is the prerogative of users.

The coverage has been wide-ranging, though it may not be as uniform as we would wish. The veterinary and medical areas, for example, are not as thoroughly covered as are the systematics of the species concerned. However, the coverage is more complete than was Miller's (1956) bibliography in some areas, such as the depth of coverage of articles from the N.Z. Journal of Agriculture. Errors in Miller's (1956) bibliography have been corrected. For example, he mistakenly gave the printer ("Auckland, Brett Printing co., ltd.") instead of the publisher ([Cawthron Institute, Nelson]) for the citation of Tillyard's (1923) paper on Aphelinus mali, and Nowicki's (1875) paper describing New Zealand Diptera was incorrectly stated to have been published in a journal series when it was in fact privately printed.

A special feature is the inclusion of university theses and research projects, as well as unpublished reports provided they are in the public domain. We have excluded reports from research institutions when they are marked "not for publication", even though many contain interesting, relevant information about projects that is not available from any other source. (Such publications should have a "sunset clause" after 3 to 5 years so as to place the information in the public domain after that time.) Previously unindexed articles which may have been overlooked are also included. For example, the index to the Transactions and Proceedings of the N.Z. Institute indexes only selected abstracts published therein (those of papers published elsewhere); our coverage includes all abstracts, as well as the discussions. The index to N.Z.'s Nature Heritage does not include the biographical accounts of naturalists printed on the inside back covers of issues; we include the 16 accounts in which terrestrial invertebrates are mentioned.

Coverage of the older literature is virtually complete. Its importance should not be dismissed. There have been big advances in knowledge in recent times and there is sometimes a tendency to overlook or dismiss work more than 30 years old. The opportunity to reassess the older findings in the light of present-day knowledge should not be missed. For example, information about how pest problems were dealt with in the days before DDT has great relevance for today's organic agriculture.

The bibliography presently comprises approximately 14500 references and is as complete as we can make it up to 1985. It contains at least 95% of the core or basic literature for most subjects, and more than 60% of the fringe or "grey" material published in popular magazines, newsletters, and similar sources.

The references are arranged in nineteen separate sections, each a bibliography. Within each section references are listed alphabetically by author, then chronologically by year of publication. In cases where authors have published two or more articles in the same year, these are NOT listed in precise chronological order of publication, but are in sequence within a serial title. Separate bibliographies such as these are expected to be more useful than one large alphabetical listing, even though the same reference may be repeated in different sections.

The 19 sections are as follows:

There is no printed subject index. This function is fulfilled by the BUGS database (Crosby & Ramsay 1992, 1994) which is a computerised information source accessible on the 1992 Silver and 1994 Spectrum "BUGS on-disc" on CD-ROM.

Also included with the bibliography is a list of journal title abbreviations, and the thesaurus which lists approximately 4000 terms or content descriptors, together with a list of the numerical code numbers.

Standardisation of citations -- rules and conventions

We have standardised the way references and their sources are cited without sacrificing precision. This was necessary in order to ensure straightforward operation of the BUGS database and to make this publication more user-friendly.

Journals

A pragmatic approach was adopted to the standardisation of citations for journals, where various elements may change over time. We wanted no loss of accuracy, but were prepared to change certain details which could be regarded as "bibliographic niceties" -- details which made a citation precisely accurate, but which seldom, if ever, were used when those references were cited because of the confusion that would result. The guiding principle was that the citation should be simple and the reference accurately identified.

For example, in the journal series Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute we have ignored the fact that with volumes 3, 9, and 41 to 44 the Proceedings were published separately from the Transactions. To be strictly correct, citations from these volumes should be quoted as being in either one of the two journal series rather than as in one combined series. Researchers citing articles from these volumes have always assumed them to be only from one journal series.

Over the lifespan of a journal there are usually modifications and developments, such as title changes, volume number alterations, variation in the number of parts per volume, and in pagination. These may create bibliographic problems in that precise citation of articles is made more difficult, so that errors arise. Further, the coverage and content may change over time from reporting original research, to publishing popular reviews and accounts of research instead.

There are several examples of New Zealand journals changing over time which illustrate the problems and the need for citation standards and consistency. The New Zealand Journal of Agriculture is an example. This commenced publication in June 1910 and ceased publication in December 1987. During this time there were three name changes, the number of volumes eventually changed from two to one per year, volume numbers were sometimes in Roman rather than Arabic numerals, the number of parts per year was sometimes only 11, consecutive pagination per volume changed to separate pagination per part, and the journal's scope changed from being a mixture of original and popular articles and expert advice from the Department of Agriculture to comprising popular articles produced by private businesses only.

It began publication as a monthly entitled the Journal of the Department of Agriculture, New Zealand, published by the New Zealand Department of Agriculture, Commerce, and Tourists, and printed by the Government Printer, Wellington. It was available to subscribers for 2s 6d per year -- "a charge to defray the expense of transmission" -- a price that did not increase for 41 years! Its purpose was to be a medium carrying timely advice for farmers, and thus replace the numerous Leaflets and Bulletins reprinted from the Department of Agriculture's Annual Report which had hitherto performed this service. The Journal was also intended to be the medium for publication of the results of investigations by the Department's staff, as these were included within the official Annual Reports to Parliament, and therefore difficult to find and neither readily available nor widely distributed.

It underwent three title changes:

  1. J. DEP. AGRIC. N.Z. Journal of the Department of Agriculture, New Zealand, volumes 1-5, 1910-1912.

  2. J. AGRIC. N.Z. Journal of Agriculture, New Zealand, volumes 6-16, 1913-1918.

  3. N.Z. J. AGRIC. New Zealand Journal of Agriculture, volumes 17-152, 1918-1987.

Variation in volume and part numbering, and in pagination also occurred:

  1. Two volumes per year were issued between 1911 and 1984. In 1910 there was only one volume because the journal started in June. Between 1985 and 1987 one volume per year was issued.

  2. Roman numerals were used on title pages for volumes 1(1) to 2(3) and 5(5) to 40(6). Note though that for volumes 10(1) to 16(6) there were dates only on the title page; the Roman numeral volume and part numbers were only on covers. All other volume numbers were in Arabic numerals.

  3. Volume 1 was different from all other volumes in that it consisted of 7 parts, covering the seven months of 1910 from June to December. Thereafter from volumes 2 to 149 there were 6 parts per volume -- January to June, and July to December -- with the single exception of volume 141 which had 5 parts only. The exception occurred in 1980 when the publisher combined January and February as one part in volume 140, and allowed volume 140 to proceed to part 6 in July; this decision meant that volume 141 was left with 5 months (August to December) and 5 parts. A volume and part misnumbering occurred in volume 137, July to December 1978; volume 137 parts 1 to 4 were numbered volume 136 parts 7 to 10 respectively, and volume 137 parts 5 and 6 were numbered volume 137 parts 11 and 12 respectively. Volume 41 part 1 was unnumbered.

  4. Volumes 150 to 152 had 11 parts per volume, with January and February combined as one part. Volume 150 part 1 was misnumbered volume 159 part 1, and volume 150 part 4 was unnumbered.

  5. Pages were consecutively numbered in volumes 1 to 110. From volume 111 each part was separately paged, and it became essential to cite the part number as well as the volume number to enable a reference to be found easily. This change from a journal pagination to a magazine pagination occurred when in July 1965 the publisher became Wilson and Horton Ltd working in association with the Department of Agriculture. The contents became commercial and popular, presumably to compete with the other agricultural publications available, and with information transmitted by radio and television programmes.

References

Names of authors

The full surname of an author is given first, followed by initials. We have ensured as far as possible that each author has consistent initials irrespective of the initials used in the original publications. This has necessitated adding initials in some cases, e.g., R. Hill as R.L. Hill, or their omission as appropriate, e.g., D.A.M. Craig as D.A. Craig.

In a few cases an author has used different surnames. Examples of this in the bibliography are:

Anonymous publications are cited with the authorship "Anon". Corporate authorship of anonymous publications has not been used, even though its use may have been possible, because the result is not user-friendly. Square brackets enclose an author's name when a publication without attributed authorship is known from other evidence to have been written by that author, and also in the few cases where a publication was originally attributed incorrectly to another author.

Dates

The date given is the year of publication. When the actual year of publication is known to differ from the year printed on the title page, the publication year is used without indication that a different date appears on the publication.

Sometimes volumes in an annual journal series are for a particular year, but were in fact not issued until the following year. In such cases we have placed the year for the volume in parentheses after the publication year. For example, in the series TRANS. PROC. N.Z. INST. articles of volume 38 usually have a date in the form 1906(1905), which means they were published in 1906 in the volume for 1905. The year 1905 is more prominent on the title page than is 1906, and therefore is sometimes cited, incorrectly, as the date of publication. As well, many libraries have "1905" indicated on the covers of bound volumes rather than "1906".

The years cited for university theses and projects are those on the title pages and indicate when they were handed in, rather than the year in which they were accepted.

Titles of references

Titles of papers and books are identical with those of the title pages of the original works. When no title is given, such as for notes of meetings, a title derived from the contents of the note has been used and enclosed in square brackets. Words in titles have been standardised to lower case letters only. Capital-letter use has been restricted to the first word of a title, place names, scientific names, and authors, or where non-English language use required it.

Punctuation has been added to titles to separate the main and secondary title elements in the cases where typography alone was used in the original title to do this. A colon has been used as the standard punctuation separator to distinguish elements of higher-level taxonomic units, e.g., Diptera: Simuliidae.

Accent signs have been omitted from words. However, for the German umlaut the letter "e" has been substituted for the umlaut immediately after the umlaut-accented vowel, e.g., "fuer" for "fūr".

Generic and specific names are given in italics irrespective of the font used in the original title.

Mis-spelt names have been corrected without any indication given that a name was mis-spelt originally. When the authority for a species name has been used in an abbreviated form in a publication title, a period (.) terminates the authority abbreviation, even if it was not used in the original reference title.

"New Zealand" has been spelt out in full if it was abbreviated in the original title. The abbreviations "&c" and "&" have been converted to "etc." and "and" respectively.

Part numbers of papers in a series are given in Arabic numbers only. On the few occasions where a number was omitted in the original title, or an incorrect number given, the correct number has been added or substituted without indication. Some series of papers were published out of numerical sequence because they were printed in different journals in different years. Where a paper of a series was co-authored, a missing number in a sequence may sometimes be discovered under the co- author's name.

Journal titles

Journal titles are printed in CAPITALS, and abbreviated according to the Serial Sources for the BIOSIS Previews database published by BIOSIS, Philadelphia, U.S.A., and the International Standard (ISO 833) "International list of title word abbreviations". Abbreviations for title words not in the ISO have been formed on the same principles as those in the Standard. Periods (.) have been used after each abbreviated word, as well as after contractions such as Natl. (National), followed by a space before the next word. Country and state names two or more words long have no space between the period and the next word, e.g., New Zealand = N.Z., United States of America = U.S., New South Wales = N.S.W.

The sequence of words in a journal title can be processed in alternative ways using different library cataloguing systems. In general the cataloguing system used in the Mt Albert Research Centre library has been followed. Sometimes it is debatable which words from a title should be included. Mostly words have been included rather than omitted. Occasionally words, particularly country or city names, have been added when not on the title page but which are implied or used elsewhere.

An alphabetical list of all the abbreviated journal titles used in this bibliography, together with their corresponding full titles, is included. We have omitted "The" as an initial word from all journal titles. This list will enable journals to be recognised readily in any library cataloguing system or publication of library holdings. It will also assist researchers who need to provide full journal titles for references in their papers.

Some sets of publications are treated as periodicals rather than books, as this proved to be the most user-friendly way of citing them. Four examples follow:

  1. In recent years, ANZAAS Congresses and International Congresses of Entomology have published volumes of Abstracts at the time of Congresses rather than issuing Proceedings. These volumes are published by the Organising Committees of the host city or country, but this information is not given with most of them. The citation of an abstract as if it were in a book is long and clumsy, and requires the use of square brackets around the publisher and place of publication. However, by treating these publications as periodicals -- ABSTR. ANZAAS CONGR. and ABSTR. INT. CONGR. ENTOMOL. -- abstracts can be cited concisely and unambiguously without the problems associated with a book citation.

  2. A series of volumes has appeared containing the papers presented at the Australasian Conferences on Grassland Invertebrate Ecology. In early volumes the recommended form of citation (given with the papers) was to present them as references from a book. This has usually been followed. However, we have treated them as a journal series -- PROC. AUSTRALAS. CONF. GRASSL. INVERT. ECOL. -- which makes the entries more concise and user-friendly, while still being unambiguous. Note that for this series there is no volume 1.

  3. The multi-authored, 3-volume work "An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand" edited by A.H. McLintock, was published by the Government Printer, Wellington in 1966. It contains short, authoritative articles by many authors. We have included 72 articles from it in this bibliography. To simplify citation and to keep entries concise we have treated this too as a journal -- ENCYCL. N.Z. -- rather than as a book.

  4. A number of references published as parts of Expedition Reports have complex and confusing citations when listed as books. We treated such Expedition Reports as journal titles, which simplified citation without sacrificing accuracy or the ability to locate the articles using library-finding tools.

Journal volume, part, and pagination numbers

Arabic numbers have been used for all series, volume, and part numbers for journals even though Roman numerals may have been used in the original. Where a journal has no volume number, but it refers to a particular year, that year is used as the volume number (the publication year may be later). If a part number immediately follows a volume number it is enclosed by parentheses. If a journal has a series number, this also is enclosed in parentheses, but it is placed before the volume number.

With some journals a number is used in the title to indicate the sequential number of a meeting, conference, or congress, e.g., Proceedings of the 17th New Zealand Weed and Pest Control Conference. We took the number out of the journal title and placed it at the end as a volume number thus: PROC. N.Z. WEED PEST CONTROL CONF. 17.

Where two or more part numbers for a volume have been combined into one issue, a hyphen (-) has been used between the part numbers to indicate they are combined, irrespective of whether a slash (/), ampersand (&), or comma (,) was used by the publisher. It is also used in a few cases where a reference spans two parts but maintains sequential pagination.

The pagination for journal articles is given in full. The page range may include unnumbered pages or plates of articles, or pages which are occupied by advertisements. If an article has been published in two parts with sequential page numbers in the same year, the page numbers are given as one page range. On the other hand, if the pagination is not sequential between the two parts, then the page numbers are given as two page sequences separated by a semicolon.

Supplementary information

The supplementary information given for some articles indicates the language of the article, the scope of information, or the pages on which information about New Zealand invertebrates can be found. If an article has been abstracted elsewhere, or republished elsewhere, that fact is noted with the article rather than duplicating it as another, separate reference.

Comments and queries about this document to Trevor Crosby, curator NZAC / Email Send email to Trevor Crosby