Comitas Institute for Anthropological Study

In addition to standard bibliographic data, each reference to a listed publication includes the following: (1) a reference number keyed to the appropriate topical section; (2) a coded notation identifying the country or territory covered by the publication; (3) if publication is not in English, a translation of the title into English ; (4) the number(s) of any other topical sections(s) to which the publication is related (this number, in tandem with the primary reference number, provides a capsule description of the subject matter of the publication); and (5) a coded notation as to the library or place where the publication was originally located. The reference style in The Digitized Caribbeana is a modified version of that utilized by the American Anthropologist , the principal journal of the American Anthropological Association, as well as by a large number of other pro fessional publications. While other styles could have been employed, for clarity of format, the one selected best serves the purposes of this bibliography. 

The following examples of a book and an article citation illustrate the layout of the reference and the data that it includes:

NAME OF AUTHOR(S) An author’s name is generally given as it appears in a given publication . However, if an author has multiple publications and the spelling or usage of that author’s name varies in these publications, the version of the name utilized in this bibliography for all of an author’s publications is the one that appears most often in an author’s publications or the version known to be the au thor’s preference.

REFERENCE NUMBER . Each publication listed is assigned only one reference number placed at the extreme left of each reference on the line immediately below the author(s) name(s). That number appears in bold print and informs the reader that the publication referenced has been placed in a specific topical section. The first one or two digits to the left of the period in the number indicate the topical section to which the publication is primarily assigned. In the examples above, the number 6 in the Goveia book indicates that the reference is lo cated in section 6 (Slavery and Emancipation) : the number 19 in the Herskovits article indicates that the reference is located in section 19 (Cultural Continuities). The last four digits of each reference number indicate the position of the reference within the section, a position assigned alphabetically by author surname.

COUNTRY OR TERRITORIAL CODE . Each reference includes a geographical notation, in bold print, located to the immediate right of the reference num ber. This notation indicates the country(ies) or territory(ies) dealt with by an author in any given publication. If necessary, up to three country or territorial notations can be listed . If more than three countries or territories are dealt with in any publication, or if those areas together encompass a well-known geographical or political grouping, the code for this larger, more inclusive grouping is utilized. If, for example, a publication deals equally with Guyana (GU), French Guiana (FG), and Surinam (SR), the geographical notation for Guianas-General (GG) is employed. In section 18 (West Indians Abroad), two geographical notations always appear for each reference; the one to the left indicating the Caribbean country or territory from which the population under discussion came from, and the one to the right indicating the host country in which these migrants are located. For example, the notation JM,UK would refer to a publication dealing with Ja maicans in the United Kingdom. In the Goveia example given above, the notation LW stands for Leeward Islands, the area discussed in this particular publication; the notation GC in the Herskovits article stands for General Caribbean. When visually scanning a page of references in hard copy or on a monitor, the geographical nota tions form a clearly identifiable column that permits the user to rapidly locate references dealing with specific countries and territories.

YEAR OF PUBLICATION . This datum is located to the immediate right of the country or territorial notation. For example, in the Goveia example, 1965 is indicated as the year of publication; the Herskovits’ article was published in 1938. Given the placement of this information, dates are visible, page-by-page, in columnar alignment, facilitating the user’s search for publications of particular periods of time. It was possible to identify the correct year of publication for virtually all publications referenced in this bibliography. In a few cases, however, this information was not available necessitating the use of the notation n.d. (no date) instead of an actual year. Another convention utilized in a very small number of references is a year linked to with a bracketed question mark, for example, 1916 [?] to distinguish a probable but not verifiable year of publication. A procedural problem arose with regard to articles published more than once in different venues and to books reissued by the same or different publishers. To avoid needless repetition, such multi-published items are referenced only once; the version listed being the one most recently published . References of this kind will also include an additional notation indicating the date of publication of the original edition. In cases where a book is issued almost simultaneously by different publishers, for example, one in the United States and the other in the United Kingdom, or if the same article appears in two journals during the same year, the version selected for inclusion was the one most readily available to the bibliography team. If there was any doubt that the two represented exactly the same work, then both references were included.

TITLE OF PUBLICATION . The title of a book, monograph, or other separate publi cation, as in the Goveia example, appears in capital letters. Titles of articles are set in lower case letters, as in the Herskovits illustration. For publications published in languages other than English, the original title of the work is followed by an English translation in brackets.

FURTHER PUBLISHING INFORMATION . In references to articles, the follow ing additional information is provided: a modified abbreviation, in italics, of the journal, the volume and issue numbers, and pagination. In references to books, monographs, or other separate publications, the place of publication, the publisher, and number of pages are provided. In rare cases, some or all of this publishing information is unavailable in the work itself and, therefore, cannot be reproduced in the reference. The notation NP is employed to indicate that pagination or number of pages is unknown in those cases where the actual work was not paginated or where a citation was based on a doctoral dissertation abstract, which did not include this information. Lastly, in references to works located in the United Nations Library (UNL), call and document numbers have been added to the standard publishing information because in that library system, at the time the bibliography was being assembled, it would have been impossible to locate these works with just authors’ or editors’ names.

SECONDARY TOPICS . In addition to a primary topic, the great majority of publications cited in this bibliography provide useful infor mation about other subjects. This is noted in the reference by listing the numbers of topical sections corresponding most closely to the secondary subject matter of a particular work. These numbers are presented in bold print, within brackets, immediately following the pagination. In the Goveia example, for example, the bracketed numbers [5] and [8] indicate the work also contains ma terial pertinent to 5 (General History and Biography) and 8 (The Nature of Society) . Similarly, in the Herskovits illustration, the bracketed number [11] indicates the secondary ma terial of this work is relevant to 11 (Population Segments: Afro-Caribbean) .

LIBRARY NOTATION . Almost all references carry a notation indicating the library where the publication was first found. This notation appears in capital italic letters, within brackets, and is placed at the extreme right hand comer of the last line of the citation. In the Goveia example, the notation [RIS] indicates that the publication was reviewed and is available at the library of the Research Institute for the Study of Man in New York City. Similarly in the Herskovits illustration, the nota tion [AMN] indicates that this work was reviewed and is accessible at the American Museum of Natural History. With one exception, the code to libraries that is provided below specifies the actual libraries used in the compilation of this collection. The exception in this code, the notation [PhD], refers not to a specific library but to North American doctoral dissertations, unfortunately not available to the bibliography team but catalogued for this database through the official abstracts published by Xerox University Microfilms. Xerox or microfilm copies of these dissertations can be purchased from this source. References to doctoral dissertations from a United Kingdom university carry no library nota tions unless the manuscript itself was actually in one of the libraries used by the bibliography team. Since there was no central system in the United Kingdom for bring ing dissertations or their abstracts together at the time this bibliography was being compiled, cataloguing such material for this collec tion depended heavily on information obtained by mail and telephone communica tion between the individual universities and the bibliographic team.