Whether to use `number` or `volume` in the bib file for a book numbered in a series?

Question

If I want to add the numbering for a book in a series, which field should be used? number or volume?

In texdoc bibtex, it says

number The number of a journal, magazine, technical report, or of a work in a series.

volume The volume of a journal or multivolume book.

In texdoc biblatex, it says

number The number of a journal or the volume/number of a book in a series.

volume The volume of a multi-volume book or a periodical.

It seems that both bibtex and biblatex recommend using the field number for the designation of a book in the book series. But usually these two fields will be formatted as "No. xx" and "Vol. xx` for book entries.

Now I am confused, which one should I use in general? Or there is no general choice and it depends on the style in use?

Answer 1

They mean different things. The volume field is for a multi-volume book with a single title and author/editor. The number field is for a series of independent books that are published as part of a series. For example, Don Knuth's Art of Computer Programming is a single work with multiple volumes. You would use volume for these. But this work itself is part of the Addison-Wesley Professional Computing series. If they number each book in the series, you would use number for that number.

As a general rule of thumb, the number field for a book in a series is rarely needed, since the book is easily identified from the title, author and publisher. The fact that it's number X in a publisher's series is basically irrelevant. But the volume number of a multi-volume work is very important, since the book usually has a single title and author/editor, so which volume you are citing matters.

Answer 2

I don’t know about bibtex, but for biblatex you should use number.

Here is a specific example: As part of the series London Mathematical Society Student Texts, there are the following three books:

• Elements of the Representation Theory of Associative Algebras, Volume 1: Techniques of Representation Theory
• Elements of the Representation Theory of Associative Algebras, Volume 2: Tubes and Concealed Algebras of Euclidean type
• Elements of the Representation Theory of Associative Algebras, Volume 3: Representation-infinite Tilted Algebras

These are number 65, 71, 72 in the the overall series. An entry for the first volume could look somewhat like this:

@book{assem_simon_skowronski_elements_rep_theo_1,
  author    = {Assem, Ibrahim and Simson, Daniel and Skowroński, Andrzej},
  maintitle = {Elements of the Representation Theory of Associative Algebras},
  volume    = {1},
  title     = {Techniques of Representation Theory},
  year      = {2006},
  pagetotal = {x+458},
  publisher = {Cambridge University Press},
  location  = {Cambridge},
  series    = {London Mathematical Society Student Texts},
  number    = {65},
  isbn      = {978-0-521-58423-4},
  doi       = {10.1017/CBO9780511614309},
}

For me, the output of this entry looks roughly as follows.