References on texts
A reference is never simply "attached to a tablet". It is typed — it says in what capacity the publication concerns the text — and, when it belongs to an annotation, it is anchored to a passage with its own page range.
Both properties are editorial, not bookkeeping. A text edited in one volume and discussed in twenty articles has one edition and twenty studies, and the difference is what makes the apparatus usable.
1. The types
On the tablet itself:
| Type | What it asserts |
|---|---|
| Edition | the publication that edits the text. This is the one the Catalog groups by — a text appears in the box of its edition |
| Review | a review of that edition |
| Secondary literature | a study that discusses the text without editing it |
| Cataloguing | a catalogue entry: the text is registered, not edited |
| Auction | an auction catalogue — for a corpus with material of antiquarian provenance, often the earliest record of a tablet |
| Digital edition | an edition published in another digital resource |
| Seal | a reference concerning the sealing of the tablet |
What the corpus actually uses, in round figures: about 1,480 editions, 940 studies and 350 reviews; the remaining types are occasional. The distribution is itself informative — it says that the apparatus is built on editions and secondary literature, and that cataloguing and auction records are exceptions worth noticing when you meet one.
One text, one edition — usually
A tablet published more than once carries more than one edition reference. The catalogue resolves this by listing the text under its reference edition and pointing to it from the others; see texts published more than once.
2. Two levels: the document and the passage
| Level | Where it is entered | Where the reader finds it |
|---|---|---|
| Document | the administrative interface | the Details panel of the tablet |
| Passage | the Annotate text mode, on the annotation | the Notes column, beside the relevant line |
The distinction is the one already stated in View tablet: scholarship about the text as a whole belongs at document level, discussion of an individual line or word belongs beside that line.
On a record's page in the bibliography the two levels are merged, which is why the same tablet can appear twice under one publication with different page ranges — once for the edition, once for a note discussing a particular passage.
3. Pages
Where the reference carries a page range, the link cites precisely: not "this article mentions the text" but the pages where it does. On a record linked to dozens of tablets this is the difference between a useful reference and a bare one.
4. Seals
Seal objects carry their own bibliography, typed for glyptic purposes — edition, photograph, hand copy, commentary, reading, iconography. It is documented where the seal record is described: Seal catalogue.
5. Adding a reference
| To | Where |
|---|---|
| a tablet | the administrative interface, on the tablet record |
| a passage | the Annotate text form: choose the record and the page range while writing the annotation |
| a seal | the seal record itself |
In all three cases you can only link to a record that already exists in the bibliography. If the publication is not there, add it in Zotero and synchronise — see Synchronisation with Zotero.