Article
April 23, 2016
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by Stephen

Metaphors for Writing an Index

construction-work-carpenter-toolsI am often asked, “How do you write an index?” This is often followed by, “Do you actually read the whole book?”

Yes, actually, I do read the whole book. I need to know and understand the content that I am to direct the reader to. A computer search function may be able to pick out words and phrases, but only I, as the reader, can figure out (hopefully) what the text means.

But leaving aside the question of how an index is written, I’ve been thinking recently about the experience of writing an index. What kind of metaphors are used to describe an index and the indexing process? Though an index is a concrete object (or as concrete as a digital object can be, if the index is in digital form), the idea of an index and the creation of an index can seem pretty abstract.

Many indexers compare an index to a map. This makes sense in that both an index and a map are supposed to help you find what you want, or where you are going. Both try to identify and highlight the information that is most relevant for its audience, making the information more readily comprehensible. The indexer, then, becomes a mapmaker, and writing an index mapmaking.

When I first started indexing I thought of it as piecing together a puzzle. This soon evolved to piecing together a 3D puzzle. There was something about the layering of information in an index, through subheadings, nested entries, double-posts, cross-references, and learning how to deal with the metatopic that, in my mind, added dimensionality to the index. The puzzle part was figuring out how all the different components and pieces of information fit together in a coherent, searchable format.

More recently, I’ve been thinking about indexing in terms of building a house. The initial reading through the text and creating entries is like the unearthing of the building materials, and arranging these materials in the place where I think they should go. But until I get to the end of the book, I don’t know yet what all of my building materials will be, nor do I have a firm blueprint. Once I start editing the index, I can finalize the construction of my index/house. I can decide that yes, this is where this 2 x 4 is supposed to be, and hammer it into place. Or, maybe I realize it needs to be adjusted or moved, and I can do that and then hammer it in. It is immensely satisfying hammering a board into place.

What kind of metaphors do you use to describe indexing or indexes?

 

Article
November 28, 2015
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by Stephen

My Award Winning Index: Strange Visitors

9781442605688I came really close to missing out on the Purple Pen Award for new indexers. I knew that the deadline was approaching, but I was also enjoying a road trip with the woman who is now my wife. On the due date of the competition, we were staying with friends who live on a large lake, boat access only, electricity from solar panels and a generator, and patchy internet.

The PDF of the book I needed to upload for the competition was big. The internet, as I mentioned, was slow and unreliable. I couldn’t tell from my email program if the files had sent or not. I restarted the process a few times. I might have successfully sent those files a couple of times without realizing it.

Had I been at home with reliable internet, instead of in the wilderness with my dear love, would I have been more on top of submitting to the competition? I hope so. Sending the files certainly wouldn’t have been so nerve-wracking. I was still confident, though, in my chances for winning that I pressed on with the submission.

And the end result of all that time spent huddled over my laptop on that lovely summer day in southeastern British Columbia, not to mention the hours spent writing that particular index?

I won the award.

It was 2014, my second year as a freelancer and my fourth as an indexer. I won the inaugural Purple Pen Award for best new indexer, given by the Institute of Certified Indexers. My winning index was for Strange Visitors: Documents in the History of Indigenous and Settler Relations in Canada from 1876, edited by Keith D. Smith, and published by the University of Toronto Press in 2014.

Why was I so confident that I might win? There were three reasons.

  1. I figured that a prize-winning index should be unique in some way, which meant that the book indexed should be unique. You want to stand out, right? The book I won for, Strange Visitors, was a collection of primary documents spanning a hundred years and covering over a dozen subjects within Indigenous and settler relations in Canada. It wasn’t your typical monograph or anthology. When I received this book I sensed that this was an index I could experiment and apply new techniques and skills to.
  2. But to show off skills, you must first, of course, acquire them. I wrote the index for Strange Visitors shortly after attending the annual conference held by the Indexing Society of Canada. I left that conference with a list of new ideas and techniques that I wanted to put into practice. Thankfully I soon received just the projects to do that with.
  3. At this point I was also realizing my own progress as an indexer. I could see that I was learning and implementing new techniques. I was indexing more challenging books and my clients seemed happy with the results. I could look back at early indexes I had written and critique them. So, while still recognizing that I wasn’t yet an indexing vet, I wasn’t a complete rookie either. Just possibly my recent work was good enough to win an award.

In the end, the judges, of course, had their own criteria (which can be found here) by which they judged the submissions. Perhaps they would have been just as happy with another index of mine from that time period.

I am thankful, though, for the recognition given to me by the judges. It tells me that I am on the right track with my indexing, and I am excited to keep learning and improving. I am also thankful to the University of Toronto Press for asking me to index Strange Visitors. They publish beautifully written and designed books, and I am proud to work with them.

Article
November 15, 2015
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by Stephen

Wither Pacific Educational Press?

I got an email this summer from an editor at Pacific Educational Press informing me that the press was being shut down this fall. Pacific Educational Press, or PEP, run out of the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia, was a small press, publishing only a few books each year, but still a client that had been with me since I began freelancing. Thanks to a connection and reference from my former supervisor at Harbour Publishing to a PEP editor, I received my first freelance contract within a month of leaving Harbour.

That first project was tough. It was an updated edition of an anthology on teaching social studies to elementary students.  Chapters had been added, deleted, rearranged, and revised. I was not familiar with the subject matter, and this was my first time facing a revised edition. The editor suggested I take the index of the previous edition and update it.

Now, any indexer who has been around for a while knows that “updating” an index for a text with this many changes is “indexing hell,” as I heard it so delicately described recently. T0 be fair, I don’t think the editor realized what she was asking. I was still naive enough, however, afraid of the topic, and afraid of offending my first ever client, that I agreed to the editor’s proposal.

Sure enough, indexing that book was hell, but I got through it. More importantly, I learned from it. I learned from the previous index I was working from how to approach this sort of text. I gained confidence that I could tackle a project this different. I felt great when the editor contacted me a few months later with another project.

Since that first project three years ago I’ve indexed five more books for PEP.  Two have been high school textbooks, on fashion and nutrition and health. The others have been on dyslexia (which was also neat in that it was typeset to be more accessible to people with dyslexia), a book on teaching Shakespeare to elementary students (I wish my teachers did that when I was a kid), and finally, this spring, a book on Imaginative Ecological Education.

It was a shock to hear this summer that PEP was closing down. I have enjoyed their books. As I’ve built my business it has been encouraging that the editors at PEP have repeatedly asked me to work on their titles. As my first client, I do have a soft spot for them. Reflecting on the news of their closure, I decided that I did want to write some sort of farewell.

Looking again on their website, however, I see that PEP is not quite as gone as I thought. PEP is now an imprint at UBC Press. Will I work again on their titles? I don’t know. I have worked for UBC Press as well, but UBC Press is a much larger press, with a diverse publishing program, and it is impossible to predict what they might ask me to work on.

So perhaps this is still a farewell. Thank you, PEP, for allowing me to work with you these last three years. I wish you all the best in your new home. Hopefully I will cross paths again with your titles.

Article
July 4, 2015
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by Stephen

The Word List Approach to Indexing

Clients occasionally suggest to me that I start early on an indexing project, before the page proofs are finalized, by making a list of the terms that will appear in the index. The reasoning behind this is that when the page proofs are ready, I can search the PDF for these terms and quickly and easily fill in the page numbers. This is similar to when I hear people say that ebooks don’t need indexes, because the search function is sufficient.

This approach works for a limited number of books, such as certain reference or other fact-based books where the goal of the index is to point the reader to the facts. Name and title indexes could also be constructed using this method. Beyond this narrow range of projects, however, I think that the word list approach to indexing misses the point of what a good index seeks to accomplish.

Yes, searchable terms, if relevant to the reader, should be indexed, but a book is often so much more than its facts or names. A good biography or history will have a narrative. A good scholarly work will have an argument. A good cookbook index will have categories such as breakfast, lunch, and dessert, or spicy, savoury, and sweet, that may not be immediately obvious in the text but still relevant and helpful to the reader. These are the types of entries that cannot easily be found using the search function. If the index is truly a map, a reflection of the text, these entries need to be present.

I also question the assumption that starting with a word list gets the job done faster. In my work, I try to read the text and create the index entries at the same time. I am reading more slowly for comprehension as opposed to just reading for the key words, but overall I find that this is faster than reading once to make a word list or to mark up proofs, and then a second time (even if just using the search function), to input the entries. Of course, some books are more difficult to understand and require re-reading sections two or three times, and when I edit the index I do go back and check entries for accuracy–the one pass approach doesn’t always work as planned–but in my experience it is more efficient. Add in subheadings and the thematic and conceptual dimension of the index, being able to see the context while reading is far more helpful than using a search function.

Article
June 26, 2015
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by Stephen

Team Indexing: The Chuck Davis History of Metropolitan Vancouver

1550175335Writing an index is usually a solitary activity, but when working in-house for Harbour Publishing I had the opportunity, to 2011, to lead a small team of indexers.

The book was The Chuck Davis History of Metropolitan Vancouver, a coffee table book clocking in at nearly 600 pages. Chuck Davis, the renowned local Vancouver historian, had been unable to finish the project before he died, and Harbour took on the challenge of pulling together a large team–over forty people–to finish the work.

By the time I was assigned to the index, two other people had already been hired to create a word list of all of the terms to be included in the index. My job, and that of my co-indexers, was to search the PDF proofs for those terms and fill in the page numbers. Normally I wouldn’t suggest this approach because there is a lot, such as concepts and references, that the search function doesn’t pick up, but in this case, as the book consists of short bits of trivia and sidebars, it worked alright.

As the lead indexer, I assigned chunks of this word list to my fellow indexers (there were three of us at this point), and we set about searching for these terms. The final Word document containing the index was over a hundred pages long. As completed sections came in, I would assign a new section and check the work that I had received for consistency and accuracy. When all of the terms had been searched, I proofread the entire index, checking spelling, alphabetization, and the correct ordering of locators, as we weren’t using dedicated indexing software which automates the formatting.

If I had the chance to do this again, I would make sure that we all had dedicated software. Creating the index in Word isn’t as slow, I assume, as using actual index cards, but it is still a lot of extra work. Instead of making a word list, I would have also discussed with my co-indexers, prior to starting, our strategy for what to index and how, and then divided the book by chapter among us. As sections came in I would have still checked for accuracy and consistency, but then let the software handle the formatting when adding these sections to the master copy.

Still, having such a hands-on approach to writing an index was an excellent opportunity to be grounded in the small details that ultimately make an index work.  It was a great apprenticeship, and I’m proud of the work. It was also neat to contribute some of the captions, sidebars, and text as well.