How to cite a range of volumes in mvbook in biblatex-sbl

Question

The only relevant question I could find is over 10 years old: here

I am using the classictext of biblatex-sbl to cite a well-known author, where the work is referenced by sections in the footnotes and the published work only appears in the bibliography. The problem is that I need to cite a range of volumes in a multi-volume work. For instance, in this case, the mvbook of the "works" of this author is currently over 50 volumes. But the work I am referencing is in volumes 13-22.

So one option is to follow the Loeb suggestion in SBL 6.4.2 for something like Josephus and just say that it is a 10 volume work. In the case of Josephus, there are 10 volumes even though they are not sequentially numbered in LCL (see here). However, in this case, each volume is still numbered from 1 to 10. That is not the case for me, where they are numbered with respect to the total "works". So it would be weird to show in my bibliography "10 volumes" which would imply volumes 1-10, which is not true.

I tried using a mvbook crossreferenced to a larger mvbook but this did not work.

Here is the closest I could come in an MWE:

documentclass[letterpaper,12pt]{book}
\usepackage{polyglossia}
\setmainlanguage[variant=us]{english}
\usepackage[english=american]{csquotes} 

\begin{filecontents}[overwrite]{customstyles.dbx}
  \DeclareDatamodelEntrytypes{tdict}
\end{filecontents}

\usepackage[style=sbl,citepages=omit,fullbibrefs=true,sblfootnotes=false,citereset=chapter]{biblatex}

\begin{filecontents}[overwrite]{temp.bib}

@classictext{Author:TotalWorks:13-22,
   author      = {Author},
   title       = {A Long Work},
   xref        = {TotalWorks:13-22},
}

@mvbook{TotalWorks,
   author      = {Author},
   title       = {Total Works of Author},
   editor      = {Philipp P. Editor},
   publisher   = {Verlag},
   address     = {Berlin},
}

@book{TotalWorks:13-22,
   crossref    = {TotalWorks},
   title       = {A Long Work},
   translator  = {John Q. Translator},
   volume      = {13-22},
   year        = {2012},
}


\end{filecontents}

\addbibresource{temp.bib}

\begin{document}

\null\vfill
Citing an author.\footcite[4.5]{Author:TotalWorks:13-22}
\clearpage
\printbibliography
\end{document}

Here is what it looks like:

This is pretty close. The footnote is correct, but the bibliography is wrong since it should say "Vols." or something close to that. The suggestion of citing each volume individually will not work, since not only is that super cumbersome, but it goes against SBL style guidelines.

I could overwrite the volume field as suggested in the se answer linked above, but since the volume field is used all over biblatex and biblatex-sbl I am not sure if that is the best way?

Answer 1

If it's only the "vol." that bothers you, here is a way to have biblatex detect a range of volumes and write "vols." in that case.

\documentclass[letterpaper,12pt]{article}
\usepackage{polyglossia}
\setmainlanguage[variant=us]{english}
\usepackage[english=american]{csquotes} 

\usepackage[style=sbl,citepages=omit,fullbibrefs=true,sblfootnotes=false]{biblatex}

\DeclareFieldFormat{volumeof}{%
  \ifnumerals{#1}
    {\ifnumeral{#1}
       {\bibsstring{volume}}
       {\bibsstring{volumes}}}
    {\bibsstring{volume}}%
  ~#1
  \bibstring{of}}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@classictext{Author:TotalWorks:13-22,
  author      = {Author},
  title       = {A Long Work},
  xref        = {TotalWorks:13-22},
}
@mvbook{TotalWorks,
  author      = {Author},
  title       = {Total Works of Author},
  editor      = {Philipp P. Editor},
  publisher   = {Verlag},
  address     = {Berlin},
}
@book{TotalWorks:13-22,
  crossref    = {TotalWorks},
  title       = {A Long Work},
  translator  = {John Q. Translator},
  volume      = {13--22},
  year        = {2012},
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}
\null\vfill
Citing an author.\footcite[4.5]{Author:TotalWorks:13-22}

\printbibliography
\end{document}