Biblatex: cite an article published in several installments (multiple years and volumes)

Question

I am using BibLaTeX with the verbose-ibid style and have customized it in accord with the specifications for my thesis. I now come to an article that was published in several installments over a period of 2 years, but always in the same journal and with the same title. I want to know how I can represent this to BibLaTeX and get an appropriate bibliography entry and citations.

Let us say that the installments are:

• vol. 43 (1937), pp. 1-23
• vol. 43 (1937), pp. 390-417
• vol. 44 (1937), pp. 244-280
• vol. 45 (1938), pp. 17-43
• vol. 45 (1938), pp. 117-130

Note that this journal published two volumes per year.

The bibliography entry may be the most complex part. It should look something like this:

J. Doe, Insights on the history of plumbing, in Plumbatica 43 (1937), pp. 1-23, pp. 390-417, 44 (1937), pp. 244-280, 45 (1938), pp. 17-43, pp. 117-130.

I am flexible about the details of this: it would be acceptable to repeat the volume and year thus:

J. Doe, Insights on the history of plumbing, in Plumbatica 43 (1937), pp. 1-23, 43 (1937), pp. 390-417, 44 (1937), pp. 244-280, 45 (1938), pp. 17-43, 45 (1938), pp. 117-130.

Because there is only such item in the bibliography, I would be perfectly happy with a manual solution that involved sticking everything after the first page range (1-23) into a special field that would be glommed on to the end of the bibliography entry. Perhaps I could just stick \ppno~1--23, \ppno~390--417, 44 (1937), \ppno~244--280, 45 (1938), \ppno~17--43, \ppno~117--130 in the Pages field.

The other problem is the citations. When I first introduce this source, I will list it with other sources on the same subject, and so I will have something very much like the bibliography entry, since this is a verbose style. Then I will proceed to cite passages from it. Each citation must have the correct volume and year.

The thought occurred to me of using 5 entries in the bib file, one for each installment. However, I don't want 5 different entries in the bibliography, and with the verbose-ibid style, citations after the first would be shortened as if each installment were an independent source.

Edit: here is the requested MWE. The results are acceptable, although they are occasionally a bit too verbose (see below). My question was really about best practices. If the best practice in this case is to abuse the pages field, I suppose it's answered.

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage[style=verbose-ibid]{biblatex}
\usepackage[colorlinks=true]{hyperref}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\usepackage[nopar]{lipsum}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@article{ref1,
    title = {Insights on the history of plumbing},
    author = {Doe, J.},
    journal = {Plumbatica},
    volume = {43},
    pages = {\ppno~1--23, \ppno~390--417, 44 (1937), \ppno~244--280, 45 (1938), \ppno~17--43, \ppno~117--130},
    year = {1937}}
@article{ref2,
    title = {The rise and fall of asbestos piping},
    author = {Newman, D.},
    journal = {Annals of Plumbing},
    volume = {35},
    pages = {289--299},
    year = {1965}}
}
\end{filecontents}

\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}

\section{Title}

\lipsum[4]\footcites{ref1}{ref2}

\lipsum[1]\footcite[44 (1937), \ppno~250-256]{ref1}
\lipsum[5]\footcite[44 (1937), \pno~254]{ref1}

\lipsum[9]\footcite[297]{ref2}
\lipsum[2]\footcite[43 (1937) \ppno~15-18]{ref1}

\lipsum[6]\footcite[43 (1937) \ppno~15-18]{ref1}

\printbibliography
\end{document}

In these citations, which appear on the first page, footnote 3 would ideally not repeat the volume and year, but would just have "Ibid., p. 254." However, I recognize that the ideal may not be worth the effort it would take to achieve.

This is from page 2. In this case, I don't understand why footnote 5 does not just read "Ibid.", because the location passed to footcite is identical.

Answer 1

My solution for your problem is, to differ between bibliography entry and citation entries:

In My MWE doe_all will only be printed in the bibliography, but not used for cites (you can of course, if you want to...), and doe_43 etc. are only used in the cites, but are excluded from the bibliography by their keyword hideinbib.

doe_43 etc. will copy their informations from doe_all via crossref and only overwrite the individual data, so you have to type author+title only in doe_all.

As you can see, the ibid works now, too. I think it's normal for verbose_ibid to print ibid. + the pages again, if you refer to the same page. To modify this you have to set the option ibidpage=true.

MWE:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage[backend=biber,style=verbose-ibid,ibidpage=true]{biblatex}
\usepackage[colorlinks=true]{hyperref}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\usepackage[nopar]{lipsum}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@article{doe_all,
    title = {Insights on the history of plumbing},
    author = {Doe, J.},
    journal = {Plumbatica},
    % pages = {43 (1937), \ppno~1--23, \ppno~390--417, 44 (1937), \ppno~244--280, 45 (1938), \ppno~17--43, \ppno~117--130},
    year = {1937},
    volume = {43},
    pages = {\ppno~1--23, \ppno~390--417, 44 (1937), \ppno~244--280, 45 (1938), \ppno~17--43, \ppno~117--130}
}
@article{doe_43a,
    crossref={doe_all},
    volume={43},
    year={1937},
    pages={1-23},
    keywords={hideinbib}
}
@article{doe_43b,
    crossref={doe_all},
    volume={43},
    year={1937},
    pages={390-417},
    keywords={hideinbib}
}
@article{doe_44,
    crossref={doe_all},
    volume={44},
    year={1937},
    pages={244-280},
    keywords={hideinbib}
}
@article{doe_45a,
    crossref={doe_all},
    volume={45},
    year={1938},
    pages={17-43},
    keywords={hideinbib}
}
@article{doe_45b,
    crossref={doe_all},
    volume={45},
    year={1938},
    pages={117-130},
    keywords={hideinbib}
}

\end{filecontents}

\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}

\section{Title}

43a\autocite[22]{doe_43a}, again\autocite[23]{doe_43a}\par
43b\autocite[400]{doe_43b}, again\autocite[401]{doe_43b}\par
44\autocite[250]{doe_44}, again\autocite[251]{doe_44}\par
45a\autocite[30]{doe_45a}, again\autocite[31]{doe_45a}\par
45b\autocite[120]{doe_45b}, same page\autocite[120]{doe_45b}\par

\printbibliography[notkeyword=hideinbib]
\end{document}