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- Title
Indexing Books: Lessons in Language Computations, Part I.
- Authors
Meyers, William P.
- Abstract
The article focuses on book indexing. The main point of book indexing is to speed up human retrieval of meaningful information. For that reason over-indexing, which may lead to multiple fruitless searches, is not a good solution. At the same time printing a complete index is usually prohibited by cost consideration. So one consideration professionals give thought to while indexing a work is deciding which topics require entries, and which do not. Indexers who do not understand the subject matter may take a machine-like approach to this task. Book publishers generally will not allow a long enough space for the index to offer such complete coverage. Indexers must make choices. Both the author and the indexer also have an understanding of the knowledge likely present in the target readers and index users. These target readers and index users fall into classes: students with no prior knowledge for whom the book is course work, workers in the field who use it only for reference, etc. Machine-generated indexes, in their present state, are more helpful to users than having no index at all.
- Subjects
INDEXING; BOOKS; TERMS &; phrases; LIBRARY users; PUBLISHING; STUDENTS; INDEXES
- Publication
Key Words, 2005, Vol 13, Issue 2, p47
- ISSN
1064-1211
- Publication type
Article