From The Daily What.

Inquiring minds want to know

QUESTION: Tell me more about this notion that indexes are information maps.

COLLEEN: Indexers read a text with an eye to distilling its essence or its aboutness. “What is this page about? What is this chapter about?” they ask. As indexers identify elements of aboutness, they state them in pithy little clues known as index entries. Good indexers try to imagine a variety of ways of phrasing clues. Writing entries for all those ways is called multiple posting.

Multiple posting is how indexers offer direction to readers who think in different ways or with different vocabulary. Multiple posting enables the information map—the index—to provide direction to a wide audience. It provides many clues that point the way to a specific information destination.

QUESTION: How do indexers do their work?

COLLEEN: After all the text has been read and all the index entries have been written, indexers arrange their clues—their index entries—in an orderly way, usually alphabetically, in a document that becomes the index.  Typically, indexers do their work in these stages:

1. reading and distilling the text.
2. writing, sorting, and multiple-posting the index entries.
3. creating and structuring the index document.

Specialized indexing software facilitates and quality-checks all the stages of indexing work. Cindex, Macrex, and Sky are three popular indexing software packages.

QUESTION: What advice would you give to someone trying to create an index?

COLLEEN: It will be more difficult and will take longer than you think. Read Nancy Mulvany’s Indexing Books. If you’re the author, don’t index your own work. An author’s job is to construct; an indexer’s job is to deconstruct. Your book will benefit from the second brain of a separate person doing the deconstruction. A good index needs the perspective of someone on the outside, looking in. Find an objective third party—a neighbor or brother or, better yet, an indexing student.

QUESTION: What makes a good indexer?

COLLEEN: A good indexer reads quickly, carefully, and analytically on behalf of future readers, anticipating what they might need to know, and how they might seek it out.

QUESTION: What makes a good index?

COLLEEN: A good index …

1. speaks the readers’ language.
2. provides clues not only to what is explicit, but also to what is implied or suggested.
3. identifies common threads and groups them together.
4. distinguishes substantive information from passing mention.
5. offers direction to readers who think in different ways or with different vocabulary.
6. provides a way to compare books on similar subjects.
7. shows an author’s pride in her work.
8. demonstrates an author’s regard for his readers.

Index of World War I recruits

See their boxes of index cards?  Red Cross members here are compiling information about a WWI recruitment drive. The photo was taken in the Kodak Office Building on State Street in Rochester in an area George Eastman set aside for the war effort. (From the June 29, 1917 Rochester Herald newspaper, via the Rochester Images database.)

Powerful decisions!

Mr. McGregor

Some authors are excellent indexers of their own work. But sadly, some are not. Reading a homemade index the other day, I randomly checked a few cross references to get a feel for the writer’s competence, and once again found myself in awe. How is it that a person can have degrees from two world-class universities and still write an index entry like this (details have been changed to protect the clueless):

rabbit stew. See McGregor, Mr.

which took me to this:

McGregor, Mr., 15

How much trouble would it have been simply to give the page number at the original location instead of forcing me to make that trip?

 

Thank you, Carol Saller. I couldn’t have said it better myself. (Carol is an editor at the University of Chicago Press.)

Books

Books are sets or collections of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of paper, parchment, or other various material, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf, and each side of a leaf is called a page (Wikipedia).

I am a sucker for books. Unlike e-readers, books are solid, alluring, and smell so warm and eggnoggy.

Excellence in indexing

Today the American Society for Indexing announced the winner of its highest honor, the H.W. Wilson Award for excellence in indexing.  The award will go to Michael Brackney for his index to Dogen’s Extensive Record: A Translation of Eihei Koroku. Mr. Brackney’s award-winning work includes a chronological index, three separate names indexes, and a general index.

Dogen’s Extensive Record is the first-ever complete and scholarly translation of this monumental work into English. Eihei Dogen, the thirteenth-century Zen master who founded the Japanese Soto School of Zen, is renowned as one of the world’s most remarkable religious thinkers. More here …

Michael Brackney will receive the Wilson Award in Providence, RI, at the Society’s annual conference on April 30.