Citation Guide
Guide to Citing Objects in the Harvard Plate Stacks Collection
This is a guide to building citations for archival material in the Harvard Plate Stacks Collection, which is based on the Chicago Manual of Style. This formatting is not required when citing Plate Stacks material and users may apply whichever style guide is chosen for other resources in your research.
Much of the material in the Plate Stacks collection that fall outside the scope of the astronomical glass plate photographs and Project PHaEDRA are being inventoried, cataloged, and archived for the first time. Therefore, a researcher may find a mix of available information about an object. In cases where an object identifier is unavailable, an item description along with a box or folder number is particularly important.
Repository Name: Harvard Plate Stacks
Repository Location: Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Citation Format
Plate series & number [five digits, using leading zeros if needed]. Item description [optional for glass plate photographs with a plate ID]. Telescope, observatory, geographical location where photograph was taken [if known, elements are optional], date. Repository name. Repository location.
Example Minimum Citation
Plate B02312. February 6-7, 1888. Harvard Plate Stacks. Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, Mass.
Example Expanded Citation
Plate B02312. Glass plate photograph used by Williamina Fleming in her discovery of the Horsehead Nebula. 8-in Bache doublet Voigtlander, reworked by Clark, Harvard College Observatory, Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 6-7, 1888. Harvard Plate Stacks. Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, Mass.
Please include the following metadata points when citing materials from Project PHaEDRA. Omit field if not available:
- First Author’s last name, first name, middle initial.
- Title of work
- Publication Date or Start Year (YYYY)
- Page number or range
- [Unique identifier]
- Phaedra number preferred, ADS Bibcode or KG number acceptable
- Repository and location
- Collection
- Project PHaEDRA. Harvard College Observatory observations, logs, instrument readings, and calculations.
- Format (JPEG/TIFF, PDF, Transcript) omit if print manuscript
- URL or DOI if available
- Date accessed (for digital materials) (Month DD, YYYY)
Citation Format
Last name, First name Middle initial. Title. Date, pg. [Identifier]. Repository. Location. Collection. Format, URL (accessed Month DD, YYYY).
Example Citations
Citing pages from a digitized volume with a Phaedra number identifier:
Cannon, Annie J. Annie Cannon Notebooks. 1915, pg. 52-55. [phaedra2210]. Harvard Plate Stacks. Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, Mass. Project PHAEDRA. Harvard College Observatory observations, logs, instrument readings, and calculations. PDF, http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1915phae.proj.2210C (accessed August 16, 2018).
Citing pages from a print volume with a KG Number:
Bond, George P. Transit Circle. 1849, pg. 99-103. [KG11365.2]. Harvard Plate Stacks. Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, Mass. Project PHAEDRA. Harvard College Observatory observations, logs, instrument readings, and calculations.
Citation Format
Item description/title, dates. Collection name [in brackets if the collection is unprocessed and the collection name is created by the researcher]. Object identifier/Item/Folder#. Repository name. Repository location.
Example Citations
Harvard Standard Regions D. 1h -15 degrees. [Contact prints]. Box 2 Folder 2. Harvard Plate Stacks. Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, Mass.
Williamina Fleming with Women Astronomical Computers at the Harvard College Observatory, 1891. [Print photographs]. HCO-PHO-078.001. Harvard Plate Stacks. Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, Mass.
Bache Telescope, Bache Plates 3301-4442, Book 18. May 9, 1889 - October 14, 1889. [Observation logbooks]. B8. Harvard Plate Stacks. Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, Mass.
Citation Format
First-name Last-name, Title, date, medium, dimensions with units, Repository, Repository City: Accession No. © Copyright Holder if not Harvard
Example Citation
Anthony van Dyck, Saint Sebastian Tended by an Angel, about 1630-1632, oil on panel, 41 x 30.5 cm, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles: 85.PB.31. © The Getty Trust
Repository name
Harvard Plate Stacks
Repository location
Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, Mass.
Plate series & number
Plates are cataloged by plate series and plate number. The plate series corresponds to the telescope that was used to take the image.
Item description & Unique Identifiers
In a citation for a glass plate photograph, the item description is optional and could include details about the subject of the photograph (Andromeda Galaxy, stellar spectra, etc.), whether the photograph has annotations and who made the annotations, an observer/photographer, or the kind of astronomical work being done using the plate.
If the object you are citing does not have a unique identifier, be as detailed as possible and include a box/folder location when available.
Telescope
Each series typically represents a single telescope although some series, notably the "mb" series, consists of data from multiple telescopes. Telescopes were occasionally moved to other observatories depending on observational goals.
Observatory
The Harvard College Observatory’s collection of glass plate photographs come from a network of observatories which provided full coverage of both celestial hemispheres.
The Harvard Plate Stacks follows the Harvard Library Policy on Access to Digital Reproductions of Works in the Public Domain. In line with that policy, we provide free use of openly available digital reproductions of items in the Harvard Plate Stacks collection when the underlying works are in the public domain. Since we provide this open access, we do not charge permission or usage fees for such reproductions, and we do not issue licenses or grant or deny permission to publish, reproduce, or otherwise distribute them. For undigitized materials and new photography, there may be a cost related to imaging the object for the first time.
As a matter of good scholarly practice, we kindly request that you include an appropriate credit line to the Harvard Plate Stacks when you use our images, but no additional permission from us is required.
The Harvard Plate Stacks keeps various bibliographies and records related to the use and discussion of our materials and histories. You are more than welcome to share any forthcoming publications or uses with us by contacting us.