Index (publishing)
[1] In a traditional back-of-the-book index, the headings will include names of people, places, events, and concepts selected as being relevant and of interest to a possible reader of the book.
In a library catalog the words are authors, titles, subject headings, etc., and the pointers are call numbers.
Internet search engines (such as Google) and full-text searching help provide access to information but are not as selective as an index, as they provide non-relevant links, and may miss relevant information if it is not phrased in exactly the way they expect.
A similar reference to indexes is in Shakespeare's lines from Troilus and Cressida (I.3.344), written nine years later: And in such indexes, although small pricks To their subsequent volumes, there is seen The baby figure of the giant mass Of things to come at large.
"[3] Until about the end of the nineteenth century, books, fiction as well as non-fiction, sometimes had very detailed chapter titles, which could be several sentences long.
[3] A section entitled "An Alphabetical Table of the most material contents of the whole book" may be found in Henry Scobell's Acts and Ordinances of Parliament of 1658.
[7] G. Norman Knight quotes Shakespeare's lines from Troilus and Cressida (I.3.344) – "And in such indexes ..." – and comments: "But the real importance of this passage is that it establishes for all time the correct literary plural; we can leave the Latin form "indices" to the mathematicians (and similarly "appendices" to the anatomists).
LaTeX documents support embedded indexes primarily through the MakeIndex package.
A complete and truly useful index is not simply a list of the words and phrases used in a publication (which is properly called a concordance), but an organized map of its contents, including cross-references, grouping of like concepts, and other useful intellectual analysis.
Some indexers specialize in particular subject areas, such as anthropology, business, computers, economics, education, government documents, history, law, mathematics, medicine, psychology, and technology.
Vladimir Nabokov's novel Pale Fire includes a parody of an index, reflecting the insanity of the narrator.
ASI serves indexers, librarians, abstractors, editors, publishers, database producers, data searchers, product developers, technical writers, academic professionals, researchers and readers, and others concerned with indexing.
It is the only professional organization in the United States devoted solely to the advancement of indexing, abstracting and related methods of information retrieval.
