This paper delves into the cultural and social dimensions of indexes by examining their functionality and production, drawing on discussion of lists as cultural techniques in the literature of the social sciences and cultural studies. A brief overview of the various dimensions of lists emphasises discontinuity – the absence of a narrative or argumentative connection between the items in the list. Lacking a predetermined order, lists have the potential to accommodate different arrangements and comparisons, a concept exemplified by the alphabetical arrangement of an index, which reconfigures a narrative text through its non-narrative structure. This radically different order structure is one of the defining characteristics of an index, providing an opportunity to view the pre-existing text from a new perspective. Acting as a mediator, the largely invisible (and often unappreciated) indexer bridges the gap between the structure of the text and the new order of the developing index, which is the result of a myriad micro-decisions on what to include and exclude. The resultant index not only supplements the existing text but may also challenge the identity of the text itself, a concern that was expressed by early critics of indexes. Examples from literary indexes in the works of Butler, Vonnegut and Perec demonstrate how indexes may deliberately catch the attention of the reader and are far more than functional devices for information retrieval.
{"title":"What’s in an index? The hidden work of book indexing","authors":"Urs Stäheli","doi":"10.3828/index.2023.45","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/index.2023.45","url":null,"abstract":"This paper delves into the cultural and social dimensions of indexes by examining their functionality and production, drawing on discussion of lists as cultural techniques in the literature of the social sciences and cultural studies. A brief overview of the various dimensions of lists emphasises discontinuity – the absence of a narrative or argumentative connection between the items in the list. Lacking a predetermined order, lists have the potential to accommodate different arrangements and comparisons, a concept exemplified by the alphabetical arrangement of an index, which reconfigures a narrative text through its non-narrative structure. This radically different order structure is one of the defining characteristics of an index, providing an opportunity to view the pre-existing text from a new perspective. Acting as a mediator, the largely invisible (and often unappreciated) indexer bridges the gap between the structure of the text and the new order of the developing index, which is the result of a myriad micro-decisions on what to include and exclude. The resultant index not only supplements the existing text but may also challenge the identity of the text itself, a concern that was expressed by early critics of indexes. Examples from literary indexes in the works of Butler, Vonnegut and Perec demonstrate how indexes may deliberately catch the attention of the reader and are far more than functional devices for information retrieval.","PeriodicalId":83061,"journal":{"name":"The indexer","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139169614","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Hazel K. Bell recounts the extraordinary difficulties and delays she faced in indexing Jeremy Wilson’s Authorised biography of T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) while Wilson was still completing it. She goes on to detail her continuing collaboration with Wilson on the ten volumes he published of Lawrence’s correspondence, all issues of the journal of the T. E. Lawrence Society, and the full text of the 1922 edition of Seven pillars of wisdom . In this last index she incorporated terms devised by Lawrence himself as page headings or running titles for the 1926 subscriber edition. Wilson always showed a keen interest in indexing, and planned to upload to the internet a cumulation of all the indexes to his works on Lawrence as a single ‘union index’. It is difficult to establish whether this work was ever completed, or uploaded; little trace remains.
海泽尔-K.-贝尔讲述了她在为杰里米-威尔逊的《阿拉伯的劳伦斯》授权传记编制索引时所遇到的非同寻常的困难和延误，当时威尔逊仍在完成该传记。她接着详细介绍了她与威尔逊在以下方面的持续合作：威尔逊出版的十卷劳伦斯通信、T. E. Lawrence Society 的所有期刊以及 1922 年版《Seven pillars of wisdom》的全文。在最后一个索引中，她将劳伦斯自己设计的术语作为页眉或行文标题纳入了 1926 年的订户版。威尔逊一直对编制索引表现出浓厚的兴趣，他计划将自己所有关于劳伦斯的作品的索引都上传到互联网上，形成一个 "联合索引"。很难确定这项工作是否已经完成或上传；留下的痕迹很少。
{"title":"‘Rather a complicated person’: indexing T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)","authors":"Hazel K. Bell","doi":"10.3828/index.2023.35","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/index.2023.35","url":null,"abstract":"Hazel K. Bell recounts the extraordinary difficulties and delays she faced in indexing Jeremy Wilson’s Authorised biography of T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) while Wilson was still completing it. She goes on to detail her continuing collaboration with Wilson on the ten volumes he published of Lawrence’s correspondence, all issues of the journal of the T. E. Lawrence Society, and the full text of the 1922 edition of Seven pillars of wisdom . In this last index she incorporated terms devised by Lawrence himself as page headings or running titles for the 1926 subscriber edition. Wilson always showed a keen interest in indexing, and planned to upload to the internet a cumulation of all the indexes to his works on Lawrence as a single ‘union index’. It is difficult to establish whether this work was ever completed, or uploaded; little trace remains.","PeriodicalId":83061,"journal":{"name":"The indexer","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139170207","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Important notice: distribution of The Indexer","authors":"","doi":"10.3828/index.2023.42","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/index.2023.42","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":83061,"journal":{"name":"The indexer","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139170360","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Lost in translation: the perils of indexing translated works","authors":"Pierke Bosschieter, Sam Arnet","doi":"10.3828/index.2023.40","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/index.2023.40","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":83061,"journal":{"name":"The indexer","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135825577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Translating <i>Index, a history of the</i> : a comparison of its English, German and Italian indexes","authors":"Paula Clarke Bain","doi":"10.3828/index.2023.33","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/index.2023.33","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":83061,"journal":{"name":"The indexer","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135825575","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Raising the profile of indexing: National Indexing Day 2023","authors":"Ann Kingdom","doi":"10.3828/index.2023.37","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/index.2023.37","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":83061,"journal":{"name":"The indexer","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135879953","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Hazel K. Bell, editor of The Indexer from 1978 to 1995, reflects on the content of the journal 40 years ago. In this issue, she travels back to October 1983. Reflections on past issues are a regular feature in the journal. You can look further back in time with the ‘The Indexer forty years ago’ series, which started in the September 2021 issue, or ‘The Indexer thirty years ago’ series, which was published from 1991 to 2008.
{"title":"<i>The Indexer</i> forty years ago (October 1983)","authors":"Hazel K. Bell","doi":"10.3828/index.2023.38","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/index.2023.38","url":null,"abstract":"Hazel K. Bell, editor of The Indexer from 1978 to 1995, reflects on the content of the journal 40 years ago. In this issue, she travels back to October 1983. Reflections on past issues are a regular feature in the journal. You can look further back in time with the ‘The Indexer forty years ago’ series, which started in the September 2021 issue, or ‘The Indexer thirty years ago’ series, which was published from 1991 to 2008.","PeriodicalId":83061,"journal":{"name":"The indexer","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135826669","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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