How do you do non-numeric book editions in BibTeX?

Question

I want to reference the book "An Introduction to Fluid Dynamics" by George Batchelor using BibTeX. The edition I'm using says it is the "First Cambridge Mathematical Library Edition 2000". This is not the first edition of the book, so I want to make the distinction between this version and the first, but I'm not sure what the correct way to input the edition into BibTeX is (it's not just a number like "First").

Answer 1

I don't know if you have to follow a style guide that says otherwise, but I would literally typeset the edition's description. The "TeXnical" correct way to do so very much depends on the used bibliography style. BibTeX's standard styles (plain & friends) append "edition" to the contents of the edition field, other styles don't do so. biblatex checks if the edition field contains a numeral and will append "edition" (or whatever term is appropriate for the chosen language) only if this is true. Here's an example using plain:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{Bat00,
  author = {Batchelor, George},
  year = {2000},
  title = {An Introduction to Fluid Dynamics},
  edition = {{First Cambridge Mathematical Library}},
}
\end{filecontents}

\begin{document}

\nocite{*}

\bibliographystyle{plain}
\bibliography{\jobname}

\end{document}

EDIT: And an example using biblatex:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[abbreviate=false]{biblatex}

\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{A01,
  author = {Author, A.},
  year = {2001},
  title = {Alpha},
  edition = {1},
}
@book{Bat00,
  author = {Batchelor, George},
  year = {2000},
  title = {An Introduction to Fluid Dynamics},
  edition = {First Cambridge Mathematical Library edition},
}
\end{filecontents}

\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\nocite{*}

\begin{document}

\printbibliography

\end{document}

(The filecontents environment is only used to include some external files directly into the example, so that it compiles. It is not necessary for the solution.)