Article
June 27, 2019
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by Stephen

Why Correctly Identifying the Metatopic Matters

I have been reluctant to write about metatopics. It is already extensively discussed by Do Mi Stauber, Janet Perlman, and Margie Towery in their books, as well as, I assume, elsewhere. Appropriately handling the metatopic is also one of the trickier aspects of indexing to master. I am not sure what I can add to the discussion that is new. I also suspect that reading about the metatopic only goes so far. The best learning comes from taking theory and applying it to real books, though perhaps that is simply how I learn best.

Still, I was recently talking with a new indexer who was struggling with the metatopic, and a misconception came to light that might be worth highlighting. Specifically, this new indexer was feeling overwhelmed by the multiple metatopics which she had identified in the book. The misconception was that the metatopics identified were actually main topics, or what Margie Towery might call supermain headings. These are clearly important topics that need to be in the index, but they do not encompass the whole book, which is what differentiates main topics from metatopics.

I like what Janet Perlman says about the metatopic in her book, Indexing Tactics & Tidbits (Information Today, Inc., 2016):

“…The metatopic is intertwined with aboutness. When the indexer can make a cogent statement of what a book is about, whether it be a word, a phrase, or a sentence, he has identified the metatopic of the book.”

There is usually only one metatopic in a book, sometimes two if a book has dual subjects. It may be a complicated metatopic, requiring a sentence or three to explain, but it should still be a single topic or concept that encompasses the whole book.

Correctly identifying the metatopic is important because this impacts how the metatopic is handled in the index and how the whole index is structured. This new indexer was having trouble because she was trying to follow the advice to disperse information away from the metatopic entry. This is generally good advice, and the reasoning is, since everything in the book, theoretically, falls under the metatopic, all main topics should stand on their own as main entries. In this approach, the metatopic should be a signpost to the main entries via cross-references, and should only gather general information that are not able to stand alone. It is usually not a large entry. This approach works fine when there is a single metatopic, but not if you are trying to disperse information for multiple topics. As this indexer learned, if you are trying to disperse all of the information from all of the main topics, the index quickly loses all sense of structure and some information simply does not stand alone very well. 

The flip side to dispersal is gathering, and while gathering the whole book under the metatopic entry is not practical, gathering under individual main topics is. This is why we need to distinguish between the metatopic and supermain headings, because these different types of information and entries are handled differently. As I have discussed previously, entries should contain or direct readers to everything they need to know about that topic. Overly large entries can be split up into smaller chunks that are still meaningful, but we should see dispersal and gathering as complementary techniques for structuring the index. They each have their role, and the starting point is correctly identifying the different components of the book and how those components translate into the index.

The metatopic plays key role in the index, but only if it is first correctly identified.

Article
August 26, 2018
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by Stephen

Indexing Institutional Histories: A Case Study

This last week I finished the index for a large institutional history, 550 pages, including endnotes. It was one of the more challenging books I have indexed. I will not yet reveal the name of the institution, or the title or author, as the book is not yet published, but I am still interested in exploring what made this project unique while it is fresh in my mind. You see, while the institution described is currently a single entity, the book actually discussed three institutions. Let’s call them the museum, the archives, and the library.

The first set of intertwined institutions are the museum and archives. About fifteen years ago they were formally amalgamated, and so they are, now, a single entity while retaining their distinctive spheres. For most of their history, though, going back 100+ years, they were separate institutions, yet often shared the same building. So in a sense this book is really a story of parallel, yet conjoined, histories. Part of my job, as the indexer, was to reflect both histories in the index, and to make it clear when each was being discussed.

The second set of intertwined institutions are the library and the archives. The library was actually established first, before the archives, and part of its mandate was to collect archival records. A few years later the archives were created as a separate entity, and yet for decades not only did the two share a building (with the museum), but they also shared a single administration. The head archivist was concurrently the head librarian. This mixing of roles continued until separate administrators were finally appointed, and until the archives moved out, with the museum, into a new building. At that point the library drops out of this particular story. Yet the library still needed to be addressed in the index. Its presence added yet another level of complexity, made even more so as it was often not clearly differentiated from the archives. The text usually treated both as a single entity, with a focus on archival work, probably because the same staff were involved in both. Because of that, while I had separate main entries for each, for when the difference was clear, I also tended to assume, when the difference was not clear, that the archival side was being discussed.

A temptation for this kind of book is to essentially write two, possibly three, separate indexes, one for each institution. In practice, because separate indexes are not very practical, this would probably look like massive entries for each within a single index, in which the whole history of each institution is clearly delineated. I don’t think that this approach works either. Overly large entries, with long lists of subheadings, or even multiple levels of subheadings, are often difficult to read. This also relates to the concept of the metatopic—the overarching topic of the book to which everything in the book relates. While I take the view that the metatopic should be present in the index as a starting point for the reader—in this case, the metatopics would be the museum and archives—I also agree that the information which form the metatopic should be broken down into their different components and scattered throughout the index to give the reader smaller chunks of information to digest. 

That still leaves the question, though, of how to differentiate between information that is related to the museum and information that is related to the archives and library. Ideally, if the reader is only interested in one institution or the other, the reader should know which they are getting. My overall strategy was to be clear in the language I used. I also dealt with this on a case-by-case basis, as I was afraid that if I was too rigid following a particular strategy or formula, I would end up with too much repetition between the entries, and an index that was longer than necessary. To give a few examples…

There were a number of areas in which both the museum and the archives had similar programs or issues. Both, for example, published books, reports, and magazines or journals. In order to differentiate, I decided to have parallel entries of,

publishing program, archives 

publishing program, museum

Other topics, I felt, did not make sense to differentiate, either because the same issues applied to both, or because it was primarily only one institution that dealt with that issue. An example would be the buildings these institutions occupied, which in most instances were shared. Another instance was finances, a lot of which were about government budget cuts which affected both equally. I thought that I would have a lot of duplication if I had separate entries, which seemed to me to add limited value. 

In these cases, I also sometimes use subheadings to highlight one or both institutions where it made sense to do so. This would usually be a situation in which the entry was primarily about one institution, but for which there were a couple of locators for the other as well. For example, exhibitions and displays was almost entirely about the museum, as I think most people would expect. Yet the archives had a small gallery that was also referenced a couple of times, so “in archives” became a subheading. For the entry for collections, which was about collections in general with numerous cross-references to specific collections, most of the subheadings were applicable to both institutions, but I also had the following two subheadings for the one instance I thought differentiation made sense:

collection policy for archives

collection policy for museum

Another issue was how to differentiate the staff, particularly the administrators who tended to have the most lengthy entries. I decided that I would not try to differentiate staff who did not have enough entries to merit subheadings, but for staff with subheadings, I tried to insert the term museum or archives somewhere near the top of the entry. This usually meant a subheading along the lines of,

appointment and departure from archives and library

This usually sorted to be the first or second subheading in the entry, which I hope will help orient readers to where this person worked, and what kind of information they can expect from this entry. I think this is preferable to giving no clue, and leaving the reader to possibly waste time on the wrong person.

All told, this was quite a dense text, though well-written. I did find the book interesting, especially as I have done some research myself at this particular archive. Now that I understand its history and collection better, I kind of want to return, though I don’t know what I would research. The index was also quite the challenge. I hope that the decisions I made make sense, especially to the readers who will be using it.