|
Why Hire a Professional Indexer?
"The index for a book is one of the most important features
that the book has. As a reader, I find a good index makes
using a book a pleasure and a poor index makes finding anything
a real chore. As a result, I usually ask publishers to let
me pick a professional indexer and pay for the index out of
my royalty account. This gives me some control over the index
quality and ensures that I end up with an index that contributes
to the book... Generally, in my experience, the worst indices
are those prepared by authors. Indexing is a specialized skill,
and deserves respect. (And, if you think authors work under
deadline pressures, consider the indexer who generally has
no more than a few days to index the book completely.)"
- from "The
All Important Index", by David Holzgang,
TidBits
"If you expect your publication to be used
after the initial reading, you must invest in a well-designed
index tailored not only to your publication, but to your users'
needs. Your information does little good if you don't provide
easy access to it. Publishers of computer and technical manuals
must remember that because there is usually no cover-to-cover
reading of your publications, your indexes will determine
how useful readers find your documents." - from "The
Index as Marketing Tool", by Lillian R.
Rodberg
Why authors should not index their own
books.
"With the index being the bridge between the author and
the readers, someone as objective as the author shouldn't
be responsible for writing the index. This article explains
why author prepared indexes are often less useful than indexes
written by professionals." - "Should
Authors Index their own books?," by Martha
Osgood.
Computers as indexers
Many folks new to indexing have heard that computers can write
indexes for them - some word processing and DTP software have
index- or concordance-generation features that provide you
with tools that might make a writer's job easier (like producing
a list of words to include in an index), but the content (phrasing,
structure, and all other content) must be provided by a writer.
If you do use this feature in your software, someone will
still have to do a lot of work building hierarchical structures
and access points (like cross-references and double-posts).
One aspect of language that software doesn't pick up on is
inference. For example, when texts discuss meal plans for
dogs, software might include entries for "meal plans"
and for "dogs," but it can't see that a human looking
for information on canine nutrition and diet would find that
passage useful. Humans can, though, and people trained in
indexing would create useful cross-references or double-posts
from related or synonymous terms, perhaps from "canine"
to "dogs," and from "nutrition" and "diet"
to "meal plans."
Software also doesn't yet have the capability to create structures
that human readers would expect to find in indexes. For example,
a business text might discuss voicemail, answering machines,
cell phones, and text messenging, but might never use the
term "communications." Computer software won't relate
those topics, but humans trained in indexing might consider
doing so. Human indexers will consider whether or not readers
of the text at-hand would be likely to look under a broader
topic like "communications," and if so, they'll
build in a hierarchical structure using subentries or by using
a general cross-reference telling readers to "see specific
types of communication.
As you can see, concordance- and index-generation features
of word processing software doesn't replace the need for a
professional indexer any more than spell-checking replaces
the need for a professional editor.
The topic of automated and semi-automated indexing is explored
in the following:
"Can't
the index be written by a computer?" by
Martha Osgood. This has a wonderfully clear explanation of
what automated indexing does and doesn't do.
"An
Overview of Indexing Methods" [PDF] by Jan
Wright in A to Z: The Newsletter of STC's Indexing SIG. Wright
describes in great detail the features of concordance- and
index-generation software and macros.
"Computer documentation doesn't pass muster" by
C. Grech in PC Computing Vol. 5 Issue 4. Page 212.
"The Best Part of Every Book Comes Last" by Thomas
Mallon in New York Times Book Review Mar 10, 1991. Page 7.
The
Art of Indexing by Larry Bonura. Published
by John Wiley & Sons, 1994. ISBN: 0471014494
Chicago
Manual of Style. (Chapter 18 in the 15th
edition, Chapter 17 and part of Chapter 8 in the 13th and
14th editions)
[TOP]
|
