Tips Tuesday: Finding the Current Version of a Quote in a Book
This is a fairly specific problem: sometimes a case quotes a section from an older edition of a book and you need to find the quotation in the current edition of the book.
Assuming the most recent edition is available electronically, generally the easiest way is to search for a portion of the quote in the new edition. However, if the wording has significantly changed it may be hard to identify the equivalent in the new edition.
The second way to do this is by using both a copy of the old edition and a copy of the current edition. Locate the quote in the old book, figure out where it falls in the table of contents, and then look in the equivalent section of the new book. Sometimes you may also have to use the index to find the relevant section of the book.
In some cases, the section quoted may have been removed altogether, and this can be challenging to determine. If you have access to any editions of the book between the one that the original quote came from and the current one, this can be helpful in figuring out when the information disappeared.




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