I recently indexed a book for children, which is a departure from my usual work. Making the project even more unique, the book was adapted from the original adult version, which I indexed a couple of years ago. I believe the book sold quite well, and hopefully this children’s version does too. It is a book about trees.

I haven’t indexed for children before, but I knew enough, from what other indexers have said, to know that some of the conventions and best practices are different. Learning to use an index is an acquired skill, which children may not have yet. Fortunately, I have on my bookshelf a slim booklet, Indexing Children’s Books, by K.G.B Bakewell and Paula L. Williams. It was published in the UK by the Society of Indexers in 2000, and is still available for purchase on the SI website. I bought the book a few years ago, when I first started to index, but I don’t think I’ve read it until now. It has proven to be an excellent resource, though. I am glad I had it handy.

The book, only 66 pages, is mostly based on a study that the authors conducted in 1997 with indexers, librarians, parents, publishers, and teachers. An additional two studies were conducted with students, ranging from what we would say in North America is elementary to high school. The book discusses both the findings of these studies—how indexes are actually commissioned and made and how children actually use the indexes—as well as how indexes should be made for children. It was quite interesting to see some of the discrepancies between what is done and what should be done, and examples of both poor and good indexing practices.

The core message is that indexes need to be easy to use. Arguably, this should be true for all indexes, including for adults, but especially for children, who may not understand how to use an index or who may be very slow in their use, being slow with spelling or alphabetization, for example. The child should be able to use the index without getting discouraged and giving up. 

One key recommendation is to use language that the children would use, which would often be simpler terms, as well as terms that may not be obvious for an adult. In a way, this is an impossible task, because how can you anticipate all of the possible search terms a user might think of? In one example given in the book, children were asked to suggest alternative keywords for the word “ice.” Terms the children suggested included water, cold, winter, icy, frost, hard, and ice cream. From an adult perspective, some of these are clearly not synonymous with ice, nor are they all good index terms as some are descriptive (terms are usually nouns), and it is unlikely there would be space in the index anyway for all these alternative terms. Still, it is a good reminder that children often approach keywords differently from adults. The indexer should consider using a variety of terms to anticipate the different ways that children might search. Multiple entry points are a must. It can also be helpful to include both general and specific terms. A reader might look under “dogs” to find information about golden retrievers, for example, and might give up if they can’t find relevant information, so double-posting is important.

Other recommendations I thought helpful included limiting the use of subheadings and cross-references (potentially confusing), as well as the use of long strings of locators (too discouraging). Passing mentions should be avoided as being discouraging and a waste of time (which is good practice anyway). Another recommendation I found really interesting was to include an introductory note explaining how to use the index. In a addition to the index as a finding aid, this turns the index into a teaching tool as well. The book also recommended a larger font size for ease of use, and had other suggestions for an inviting and readable layout. This makes the good point that an index is not simply a collection of words and numbers, or terms and locators, that direct people to information. Good design is also important for a successful index that people will want to use.

Beyond the recommendations for writing indexes and the discussions on how children actually use indexes, there were a few sections I found less useful. Parts of the book were clearly aimed at publishers, to encourage them to incorporate best practices into how they commission indexes. That is important, of course, though I am not the target audience for that. There was also a chapter discussing the National Curriculum in England and Wales, and how it relates to indexes. As someone from Canada, this was not relevant to me at all, and I wonder how up to date it is, as the book is almost twenty years old. Still, these are minor quibbles, and the book is an excellent, clearly written resource. I highly recommend it if you want to index for children. I think it’s insights definitely improved the index that I just wrote.