Published Before They Were Dated

Don't get me wrong. I really like Hathitrust and use it regularly.

I find things on it that I would not find elsewhere.

However, there is one nuance with their cataloging that I don't quite understand and that frustrates my research efforts as shown in the image below.

The "American Baptist year-book 1893-1897" indicates a published date of 1868.
The "American Shorthorn herd book v 83" from 1914 indicates a published date of 1846.

This makes searching by publication date difficult.

I think that the published year may be the first year the item in the series was published, but I'm not certain. The three items noted in the image appear to be publications of an "annual" nature and perhaps that is the problem.

Comments welcomed.

Note: these search results were obtained by searching for "rampley" on a full text search at approximately 10:30 a.m. central time today.