About Indexing

achel Dadusc, Indexer

Tel: 216.470.Fax: 1.866.632.4791

Email: rachel@dadusc.com

About Indexing

About Indexing

Text Box: Abuse (emotional and physical), 61, 466. See also Bullying; Violence Abuse (substance), xv, 71, 398. Achievement: Achievement Goal Theory, 427; Child Development Project (CDP), 75; competition and, 72-73 Agreements. See Conflict resolution

Main entry

Locators

Qualifier

See reference

More than just a reading tool:

A good index is a useful marketing tool. Libraries and universities often preview the index before placing the book on their acquisitions list. Book reviewers often include the index in their review.

A word about computers:

Indexers the world over should be dependent on their computers – most of us not only transmit

information electronically, but utilize dedicated software programs for indexing. Could anyone run a computer program and come up with a good index? Even after years of attempts, computers lack the intelligence and decision making capabilities needed to distinguish terms and concepts. At best, computers are a useful tool to compile a concordance – lists of words in a document. A trained,

experienced indexer is needed to elevate that list to an index containing meaningful relationships between terms and cross references from terms not found in the original text.

Most people do not give too much thought to the index. It’s just there – all those words, alphabetized, directing the reader to the correct pages of

interest. And yet, how many of us first turn to the index when browsing a book in a store or library? That’s because the index is the map to the book, providing access to information in an orderly arrangement of key terms and concepts.

In brief, an index contains the following elements:

* Main entries are the words found throughout the text, sometimes accompanied by qualifiers to clarify the meaning of terms.

* Large topics are broken into subentries for greater navigation.

* ‘See’ references point the reader to a heading they might be searching for under a different name. ‘See also’ references lead the way to related information.

* Page numbers are technically referred to as the locators.