Publications

Publications Related to Rail Activity in New Zealand

This page and and those linking from it will be dedicated to publications relating to rail activity in New Zealand. Publications fall in to a number of groups but we commonly refer to two of them as, Books and Magazines (or Periodicals). The difference between these are, books generally have a single issue (though a few subsequent editions is not uncommon), while Periodicals come out at regular intervals, daily (like a newspaper), weekly, monthly, quarterly etc.

BOOKS

Each Book gets its own wiki Page where data about the book is stored in a Template, which includes a cover image. These pages are also where the book's general contents will be listed and book reviews can be entered etc. Where there is no obvious reason for including a particular book in this wiki, perhaps because of a vague Title, sufficient comment should be added to the the free text area to make it clear what section of the book adds to New Zealand's railway knowledge. Book information is split over two data tables: Things that relate to the whole book are stored in the Book Table, and those that relate to a particular copy of a book are held in the Book-copy Table. Holding data in multiple tables is a straightforward way of managing Editions, Issues and Copies in a consistent way. My own library includes over 700 titles and most of these have now been entered, however they are in the process of being updated to new pagenames to match the more recently defined criteria. Each library-book's base data gets stored on its book page, with the data held in its own Book Template. An example Template is shown below.

Example BOOK Template Data

Pagename: North Island Main Trunk

Full Book Title: North Island Main Trunk: An illustrated History

Edition: 1

Book Series name:

Series Number:

Author(s): Pierre W.A.

Publisher Name: Reed Books

Publication Type: Book

Binding type: Hard-cover

Date Prefix:

Publication Date: 1981

ISBN: 0-589-01316-5

Width (mm): 192

Height: 248

Orientation: Portrait

Number of Pages: 300

Cover Image: North_Island_Main_Trunk.png

Every Book page will show a table listing the Libraries that hold a copy of that book. Likewise, going to an Author page, will (eventually) list all the Books and Articles that particular Author has written and are part of a library that is included in the wiki.

Entering a new Book

Ordinarily, Books will get entered via a screen on the wiki, and this can only be accessed by registered users who have also got 'write' privileges. Before you can access this screen, you should determine what pagename you are going to use for the book. All Book pagenames need to start with 'Book - ' followed by a unique book name, and this needs to be entered into an preliminary window accessible via the page Special:Form/Book. One rule with page name is that no special characters should be used, i.e hyphens, quotations marks, exclamation marks etc. Once a pagename is entered, checks will be made to determine if this is a New Page or there is already an existing page with that name. If after entering your 'Book - pagename' you are told there is already a wiki page with that name, you will need to check if it happens to be the same book, otherwise you need to return to the previous screen and enter a more unique title for your book. Once you have entered a unique book pagename, you are presented the Template Form where you can enter/select data for each Template field. For some fields it will be very obvious what you enter, others need to be handled in precise ways (see the next section on Conventions).

Once a Book page has been added to the wiki, it can be edited in one of three different ways. If the Template data needs editing, it is best to edit it using the Form ('Edit with Form' button); if it is data in the body of the page that needs adding or editing, you have the option of using an 'editor' or just editing the source data. The Editor is more useful for those who are not so familiar with wiki-text, as formatting options are easier to apply. It does however take a noticeable time to load the editor, so for quick edits and for those who understand at least basic wiki-text it is more efficient to edit the source data.

Conventions

To be able to manage data properly, it needs to be consistent. For this reason we need to adopt certain conventions in the area of Publications.

Wiki page names all need to be unique within a 'namespace', and I have elected to keep most things in a single 'namespace' at this stage. This raises a few issues with Publications as there are Books that have a title that that would match another logical page name, like 'North Island Main Trunk'. For this reason I have prefixed all book 'short-names' with 'Book - '. Page name should also not use any special characters as mentioned above. Short-names are the shortest practical name by which you would refer to a particular book, and is used as the wiki page name. Use of A and The at the start of a book title are optional in the book's short-name. Most searches for a specific book should be done using key words in the title, and using the wiki's standard search functionality in the top right of the screen.

Author names So far, I have been able to restrict author names to 'Surname' followed by Initials (with a decimal point separator and terminator) like such Pierre W.A.. Mediawiki (the program this wiki is built around) provides for more that one Author name, and in such cases, the names are separated by a comma.

Multiple copies of a book Should a Library want to record the fact that they hold more than one copy of a book, this can be achieved by creating additional Book-copy records and adding a decimal number between the Library number and the 'B', e.g. North Island Main Trunk - Copy001.2B would indicate a second copy. Holding additional copies does not require the first copy to be recorded as '.1' but it can be added if that is your preference. It will not clash with other functionality.

LIBRARIES

All books or magazines registered in this wiki will belong to a Library and Libraries are numbered sequentially as they are added. As Libraries hold copies of books, I have replicated that principle here, however, these book-copies do not get their own wiki pages, their data is stored in Templates on the Library page the copy belongs to. To try and avoid wiki pages holding lots of data, the pages that hold the book-copy templates are split into 2 at this stage, one for Books and one for Magazines, but as Library content grows, it may be necessary to create further splits in the future. Currently, the page named Library 001 only has links to two child-pages named Library 001B and Library 001M, each holding its own collection of copy templates. For convenience, the template data on these pages is managed using spreadsheets outside of the wiki. A sample of a Template data for a book-copy is as shown below.

Example BOOK-COPY Template Data

Unique name for this record: North Island Main Trunk - Copy001B

Book page name: Book - North Island Main Trunk

Title: North Island Main Trunk

Library Accession No: 701

Shelf ID: M701

Book Condition: Very Good

Book Value $NZ: 35

Limited Edition: No

Signed_Copy: No

Dust Jacket: Clean

Each library record has provision to store a libraries acquisition number and a shelf ID. Because my own numbering system is still in the making, I have used Sean Millar's Bibliography numbers for those books that I have and are listed, and continued the number sequence beyond that. They will probably be retained as my Acquisition numbers. The shelf ID's will eventually change as I develop something akin to the Dewey Decimal system. This will enable books on the same topic to be shelved together, rather that in alphabetical order of author name as the Bibliography has them.

Including your own library

If you have a collection of New Zealand railway/tramway books or magazines that you would like to list on this wiki, you can get in touch by emailing robert@raileng.nz Adding your library here is purely voluntary, but would be an aid for researchers who may not be in a position to acquire their own copy of certain books or magazines, or find what they need in a Public Library. Researchers who would like to access a book from a listed private library would need to make their own arrangements with the library owner. The only 'Owner' details it is intended to display are Location (Town or City) and and Email address. The only other condition of course is that the 'Library Owner' must be registered to use the wiki (as they will need to maintain their own data), and agree to follow the rules set out for inclusion of additional libraries. As the designer of this wiki, I am always open to suggestions on how to make things work better so a consensus among 'librarians' will ultimately determine what direction any suggested changes might go. Having your own books listed is certainly a good way of getting your books organised. With Library 001 being quite extensive, it involved a lot of work to get things all set up, but any library that is subsequently added, will be able to utilise the data that already exists. That means you may only have to enter a few books that are unique to your library, and 'borrow' all the rest from entries already made. You will of course have to add your own book-copy data so it reflects your copies, but again, this could just be updating records from a copy of my book-copy data.

Different Editions of a Publication

Where a second edition of a book has been produced, it becomes another entry in the Book table with the same name as the original edition but followed by " 2nd Ed" Unless there is a special reason, 1st Edition books do not have " 1st Ed" added to the page name, it is implied. Different Editions of a book should each have their own page as some of the content will be different, however, different printings of a book are ignored, as their content should not have changed. That information does become transparent with the Publication Date in the Book-copy section. Occasionally a second printing will have a different cover (e.g. "Down at the Station") and not be a second edition. This can be mentioned in the free text. There will also be possible cases of a book being called a second edition when if fact it is only a second printing (e.g. When Steam was King).

Cover Images

The image file for covers of publications should preferably be in .png format (optimal for web use) but .jpg or .tiff are also valid. Image resolution need not be particularly high, 50 - 150 dpi is more than adequate. Image file names ideally match the wiki page name (short-name)

MAGAZINES

Magazines or (Periodicals) are slightly more complex in that there is a wiki page for the Magazine, where you can describe the over-all magazines properties (like Publisher, year it started/ended frequency etc) then there is a table of issues with one record for each issue. Each Issue gets its own wiki page, holding data like issue number, date, cover image etc. Libraries will then hold Templates for individual copies, just like with books.

Should a situation arise with a Periodical where some of its major details change, a new Periodical record can be created to match that. In such cases the new record should have the same name as the old with ".1" added after it. Subsequent changes would create .2, .3 etc. A note should be added to both old and new pages explaining what has been done.

Every wiki page for a particular magazine publication (i.e. the head page) will include a list of all the issues, from which individual issues can be selected. Likewise, Author pages will include a list of all Books and Articles a given Author has produced.

Magazine numbering

For a magazine (sometimes referred to a periodical in this wiki), issues are numbered sequentially from the first one issued. Using Railfan as an example, Railfan1 equates to the first issue (December 1994) and I believe the last issue was in March 2020 so Railfan102.

It is the intention to create pages for the following Periodicals in this wiki:- Rails, New Zealand Railfan, The New Zealand Railway Observer, the 3 NZR publications (Railway Magazine, Staff Bulletin and Railway Bulletin), Yarn, NZ Model Railway Journal and the more recently started Linesider. There is nothing stopping any others being added at any stage. The wiki page for individual issues will include a list of the main articles that are New Zealand railway related with potential to add a summary of those articles, as well as a summary of each item of New Zealand News. In this way considerable detail of magazine content can become searchable text within the wiki enabling rapid identification of articles that match search criteria.

As an example of the first level of magazine data, I have entered the Table of Contents of all copies of Railfan with some expansion when it comes to news items

Because I have elected to use consecutive numbers for issues of periodicals, I need a way to reference issues where the periodical itself does not use issue numbers. For this I will create a chart on the Publication page for that periodical showing Years as columns, and Months as rows, with the relevant issue number in the appropriate cell. I have included a portion of the Rails Magazine table as an example below, the Issue-numbers are of course hyperlinks which can take you straight to the page for that issue. As Some editors had problems keeping track of issue numbers (or even month and year), determining issue numbers if one does not have the complete set is nigh impossible. Changes in frequency of publication can also cause problems, and for those reasons, I will have to leave the Model Railway Journal till last, as there are many problems with the issue numbers and I do not hold a complete set.

Rails
Vol	1	2	3	4	5	6
Month
Year	1971	1972	1973	1974	1975	1976
Jan		6	18	30	42	54
Feb		7	19	31	43	55
Mar		8	20	32	44	56
Apr		9	21	33	45	57
May		10	22	34	46	58
Jun		11	23	35	47	59
Jul		12	24	36	48	60
Aug	1	13	25	37	49	61
Sep	2	14	26	38	50	62
Oct	3	15	27	39	51	63
Nov	4	16	28	40	52	64
Dec	5	17	27	41	53	65

NEWSPAPERS

Newspaper records are an enormously valuable source of rail heritage information and I would think all researchers would be making significant use of the Paperspast website. It is the intention to develop methods whereby important 'rail' information can be bookmarked with a reference in this wiki, avoiding the need to scroll through lots of Paperspast pages to find the one you want. This does of course need one person to have already scrolled through all those pages, found the useful article, and created the bookmark. This is just a concept at this stage so watch this space for further developments.