Medieval Manuscripts at Wilson Special Collections Library: Citing Manuscripts

Citing medieval and early modern manuscripts (as well as rare books more generally) can be tricky. You may not see all the standardized publication information that style guides ask for, and style guides may not even specifically address the citation of medieval manuscripts (which differ from archival manuscripts). Thus, the citation of manuscripts is more an art than an exact science. When in doubt, err on the side of including more information rather than less so that you can be as clear as possible to your reader about what source is being cited, and reach out to a librarian for help if you have doubts. The goal of citation is to provide maximum clarity to the reader.

Manuscripts can be cited in Chicago, MLA, APA, and any other citation style you might need to use. There are a few key pieces of information to take note of when citing manuscripts in your bibliography or footnotes:

Title

The title of a work can be found in the UNC Library Catalog.

For example:

Call Number, Shelfmark, or Reference Code

In most cases, manuscripts at Wilson Library will have been assigned a call number. Most commonly, this will take the form of a Wilson-specific shelfmark, which looks like "MS [#]". In some less common cases, a manuscript might be associated with a Library of Congress call number.

For example:

However, some items at Wilson are uncatalogued, meaning that they don't currently have a consistent reference code or call number within the library; this is the case for some items in the Aaron Burtis Hunter collection, for example. In this case, you should cite the item by its name and collection name if there is one. Reach out to a librarian for clarification on a particular item's title or collection if this isn't clear.

Repository Name and Location

Because manuscripts are unique to an institution because of their handwritten nature, you should note the repository name and location in your citation.

For example:

Foliation

The foliation of a manuscript is the sequential numbering of pages in the codex. A "folio" is a single leaf in a manuscript. When citing a folio, you should specify which side of the leaf you are referring to, "r" meaning recto (front side), or "v" meaning verso (back side).

For example:

Bibliography Structure:

1. Place-name
2. Name of Library
3. Shelfmark or Call Number
4. Folio

Examples:

See the Medieval Academy of America's Style Sheet here.