The document discusses the history and purpose of indexes and indexing. It describes how indexes have developed over time, from alphabetical indexes in the 5th century to modern digital indexes. The main purposes of indexes are to help readers quickly find and locate information within documents. Indexes collect different word variations on concepts and provide terminology not mentioned in the text to improve information retrieval. The process of creating an index is called indexing and involves systematically arranging entries to allow users to locate information.
2. INDEX
An index is a systematic arrangement
of entries designed to enable users
to locate information in a document.
British indexing standard (BS3700:1988)
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3. INDEXING
The process of creating an index is
called indexing, and
a person who does it is called an
indexer.
British indexing standard (BS3700:1988)
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5. DEVELOPMENT OF INDEXES
AND INDEXING
1. 5th Century: Alphabetical Index
2. 14th Century: Annotation in Manuscripts
3. 15th – 17th Century: Concordances &
Topical indexes
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6. DEVELOPMENT OF INDEXES
AND INDEXING
4. 18th Century: indexes to books were
prepared primarily by their authors
5. 19th Century: compile indexes to cover
entire fields
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7. DEVELOPMENT OF INDEXES
AND INDEXING
6. 20th Century:
subject index with subdivision in a simple
hierarchical structure of two or three levels
(main heading and modifier or
main heading, subheading, and modifier)
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8. DEVELOPMENT OF INDEXES
AND INDEXING
6. 20th Century:
• Scholarly journals
with the rapid growth of journals,
subject access become necessary
o 1850s, W. F. Poole - publication of an index
across many journals
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9. DEVELOPMENT OF INDEXES
AND INDEXING
6. 20th Century:
• 1950s – Computers had entered the
indexing and abstracting arena and efforts
were begun to evaluate indexing using
quantitative methods.
- Hans Peter Luhn’s KWIC indexes
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10. DEVELOPMENT OF INDEXES
AND INDEXING
6. 20th Century:
• 1960s Cyril W. Cleverdon
o Cranfield Project was the
development of techniques for the
quantitative evaluation of indexing
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11. DEVELOPMENT OF INDEXES
AND INDEXING
6. 20th Century:
• Indexing has outstripped the ideas of previous
ages. We have progressed from indexes to
individual works, through indexes to several
volumes, to cooperative indexes on an
international scale
(Kuang-hua Chen, 2005)
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13. PURPOSE OF INDEXES
Indexes are designed to help
the reader find information quickly
and easily.
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14. USES OF INDEXES
• identifies information a reader might look
for
• collects the different ways of wording the
same concept
• provides terminology that might not exist
in the text
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15. USES OF INDEXES
• facilitates quotation by other
authors, by the media, by students, by
readers
• retrieves information for review by
students
• analyzes concepts to produce headings
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16. USES OF INDEXES
• focuses the gateways/entries to the
book's information to a specific
audience
• filters information for the reader in
order to prevent burnout
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17. REFERENCES
• Chen, Kuang-Hua. 2005. Indexing and abstracting.
www.lis.ntu.edu.tw/~khchen/course/ia/slide/ia200501.pdf
• Indexing and abstracting. 2008.
library.upmin.edu.ph/librariansresources/indexabs.pdf
• Index (publishing).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_(publishing)
• http://www.backwordsindexing.com/Intro.html
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