An author is responsible for writing the text of a book. The book may have a single author or multiple authors. In some cases the book may have a corporate author , an institution, organization, or company that assumes the responsibility for writing the book. A book may also have no author, in which case the title alone is used. The book may also contain contributions from several people, with one or more people mentioned on the title page as editor.
Editors compile books from the works of other people or from a number of other publications.
The distinction between authors and editors is important as many catalogs and indexes will not list editors in their author indexes. Instead, the book will be listed only under its title. The date when the rights to first publish the book were filed. Use the copyright date, rather than the printing date if both are given. Because the texts are often transcribed and may differ from original texts and are not images of them, as they are in microfilm, the citation should indicate that your source was the CD-ROM and not the original.