These guidelines summarize the Thelemic Bibliography’s “house style”, and are to be applied with a generous helping of common sense.  Questions regarding the suitability of an item for inclusion in this bibliography should be directed to the librarian.

Normal sentence structure (initial capital, full stop), where appropriate, is expected.  In general, punctuation marks should be given outside of quotation marks except where the quotation is a complete (or near-complete) sentence.  E.g., In this sentence, the “chosen quote”, followed by a comma, is nevertheless separate from the punctuation.  ALL CAPS should not be used in the bibliography except where strictly appropriate to the context and for added emphasis, such as in the Contents Listing.

Please bear in mind that the UTF-8 implementation of Unicode is supported throughout the bibliography, so non-Latin alphabets (except, at the moment, Enochian) can & should be used wherever necessary or appropriate, although the transliteration style used in a particular work should generally take precedence (this is always the case in, e.g., book titles).  It should be noted that if, e.g., Hebrew is used on a web-page, this does require the user to have a suitable font installed on their terminal; but Internet Explorer has a very poor implementation of Unicode, so some foreign alphabets may not display correctly on that browser, even if the correct font is installed.

Abbreviations, acronyms, etc., should be given with full punctuation; e.g., O.T.O.  In the case of A∴A∴, etc., full points or .'. can be used instead of pyramidia (e.g., A.A. or A.'.A.'.).

Reminders & help can be gleaned on the Edit page by hovering the mouse-pointer over the “?” to the right of some fields.  There follows specific info relating to the less self-explanatory database fields:

1. Title/Subtitle As The Oxford Guide to Style puts it, “A title’s spelling is considered sacrosanct and should not be standardized, or altered to conform to a house style”; however, the capitalization can and should be standardized to “Title Case”, e.g., Something a Little Like This, with Prepositions, etc., in Lower Case.
2. Authors This is a list of authors separated by semicolons.  Except as noted below, the surname should precede the forenames, e.g. Crowley, Aleister
   Here we are using, as is the general rule, the name by which this author (Edward Alexander Crowley) is best known. If the author has titles, these are placed last, abbreviated, and in the usual order as given by Debrett’s or Burke’s,
   e.g., Burton, Richard Francis, Capt. Sir  (the specific order of chivalry, etc., need not be given!)
   In the case of pseudonyms, the real name should be listed first, with the pseudonym as Firstname Lastname in brackets afterwards,
   e.g., Crowley, Aleister (writing as Rev. C. Verey)
   If necessary for clarity, one may wish to use terms such as “aka”,
   e.g., Mathers, Samuel Liddell (aka MacGregor Mathers, writing as Frater Deo Duce Comite Ferro)
   With a large number of authors (over 3), the accepted abbreviation (if desired) is et al. For instance,
   Crowley, Aleister; Neuburg, Victor; Archer, Ethel et al.
   
   For additional credits, such as Foreword Author, Illustrator, etc., see below.
3. Series This is appropriate if the work in question is part of a larger series of publications by a particular publisher, such as, e.g., the Sacred Books of the East series.
4. Journal/Journal Volume/Journal Issue In this case, the full name of the journal should be used,
   e.g., The Equinox.  The Official Organ of the A∴A∴.  The Review of Scientific Illuminism.
   The journal volume & issue number should be standardized to “Arabic” numerals: 1, 2, 3, etc.
5. Subjects Again, this is a semicolon-delimited list, and the only criterion for choosing suitable subject-names is that one should be as specific as possible; so, if the work concerns yoga, write Yoga; but if it concerns Kundalini Yoga and Pranayama, write Kundalini Yoga; Pranayama.  Within reason, use as many tags as you feel necessary to adequately convey the thrust of the book to the reader; or, if you prefer, leave this field blank.  Tags such as Biography, Poetry, etc., should be considered de rigueur; whilst the Fiction/Non-Fiction tags, being essentially rather meaningless (and impossible to reconcile with such tags as Poetry, etc.), are to be disregarded.
6. Format The number of possible formats is quite large, but generally speaking, Paperback or Hardcover or DVD are adequate – a single word, preferably.  For those who know all the printers’ jargon, the extra details of binding, etc., can be given under Description.
7. ISBN If the entry in this field is rejected by the software, then it is because it is not a valid ISBN.  It may be useful to know that SBNs can be converted to ISBNs by prefixing a zero.
8. Cover Price This should be entered in the correct notation for the period and place in which the book was published, using the proper Unicode currency symbol(s) where possible.
9. Pages/Start Page/End Page Give the total number of pages, including the preface and introduction if possible, e.g. xxi + 672.  The Start Page/End Page fields are only appropriate in the case of, e.g., an essay in a journal, or in any case where the work in question forms merely a subsection of the book in which it was published.
10. Publisher Either the name of the publisher or, alternatively, Privately Printed (as appropriate) with the name of the printer in brackets afterwards.
11. First Edition There is only one “first edition” of a work, for these purposes, so a “first edition thus” (i.e., the first edition of a separate publication of the work) doesn’t count.
12. Publication Place E.g., London or perhaps just England or U.K..  Please use the accepted common English name of the place or country (e.g., Beijing not Peking, and Vienna not Wien, etc.) , with the abbreviations U.S.A. and U.K. for “The United States of America” and “The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” respectively.  The “correct” spellings of place-names in a given context, just like transliterations of foreign languages, are rather debatable and changeable according to custom and usage; but when there is an apparent discrepancy between even the spelling “place name” (OUP standard) and “place-name” (English Place-name Society standard), it is better just to use common sense.
13. Languages This is a semicolon-separated list.  Since this is primarily an English language bibliography, languages should be entered according to the modern English spelling, e.g. German not Deutsch.  Secondary languages, for instance in works with interlinear translations, should be listed after the primary language of the work.
14. Extras This is a semicolon-separated list, and should include any “bonus” items, such as black pullets and battleships, etc., which might have arrived with the main item.  This field is not meant to include material which is a composite part of the item, such as dustjackets, etc.
15. Additional Credits Entries in this field should conform to the general guidelines given for the Authors field. If more than three names need to be entered, the procedure is to enter the first three & then go to Edit again, at which point more blank fields will be generated.  This isn’t perfect but it’ll have to do for now.  In the case of, e.g., a single foreword having been co-authored, the field will accept a semicolon-delimited list; but in other cases, such as when there are several separate forewords by different writers, each foreword author should have a separate entry.
16. Links It is helpful, but not necessary, to give a title for the link as well as the URL.  URLs should be fully-qualified, e.g., http://www.lashtal.com/ and with a trailing slash if appropriate, as when following domain names or subdirectories, e.g., http://www.lashtal.com/nuke/.
17. Contents Listing In this field goes the contents page/tracklist of the work in question.  The layout of entries in this field is largely down to the individual editor; however, the same general rules as for the Title field should be adhered to.  A good example of a contents list is here.  Some BBCode tags can be used in this field.
18. Description At this point one might wish to give a survey of the general features of the particular item (including details of binding, etc.), and give a précis of the material itself.  This should not include notes such as My copy signed by the author (which can go in Your Note) or personal opinions of the work in question – impartiality and accuracy are the watchwords.  If using the publisher’s “blurb”, the hyperbolæ should generally be moderated for accuracy.  Some BBCode tags can be used in this field.
19. Your note It is not necessary to give a title for the note.  The note can include any personal info on your own copy of the work, or points of interest relating to any aspect of the work.  Some BBCode tags can be used in this field.

The skeleton entry option should be selected if the entry is incomplete. This is intended as a means of entering basic information about a work, which can then form the basis for future editing.  The submit as new entry option is useful when one wishes to create a new bibliographic entry which is similar to a pre-existing entry – simply go to the Edit page for the entry you wish to base the new entry on, edit the fields as necessary, then choose this option to submit the info as a new entry.

Some BBCode tags are allowed in the Contents, Description and Your Note fields. These are as follows:

Book images and file uploads can be added after the entry has been processed by going to the Edit page and clicking on Uploads.  A suitable title can be given to each upload or image at this stage, or after the upload/image has been approved by a moderator (by going to Edit->Uploads, where there is a form for editing titles).  If it is an image, the title of the image should not include the title of the item to which it is attached.  Images should preferably have a transparent or white background, and, wherever possible, the image should be trimmed to avoid blank space around the image proper.  It is preferable not to upload composite images showing several different views of the item – these are better organized & displayed by the bibliography as separate images.

Most of the other functionality of the bibliography is self-explanatory, and can be found quite easily by clicking on the tabs at the top of the page.  In particular, please note that previous revisions of bibliographic entries are retained in the database (see History), so as to afford protection against accurate entries being overwritten by inaccurate ones.

Any technical issues should be reported to the Tech Admin.

Enjoy!