========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 11:39:55 ECT Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "Nancy C. Mulvany" Subject: Thoughts on Indexing ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- During the past year Tom McFadden and I have hosted the Indexing Conference on the WELL in California. As a way of "kicking off" this INDEX-L discussion group, I would like to share some of the topics that have been discussed on the WELL that we may wish to discuss further here. The following topics are presented in a random order, not in any order of priority! If any of them "tickle your fancy," let's talk about them. Indexing & Hypertext Structures: a natural affinity between the two? Hand-crafted Indexes (e.g., book indexes): Can they ever be complete? What makes for good ones? Given the amount of judgment involved when writing an index, can bias ever be eliminated in the index? Indexes as written documents: Are they entitled to copyright protection? What impact does the Supreme Court's Feist decision have on the copyrightability of indexes? (In a nutshell, the Supreme Court ruled in the Feist case that listings in a white page phone directory were not entitled to copyright protection.) Automatic Indexing: The wave of the future? Regarding efficient access to information, can an algorithm ever complete with the mind of a human indexer? Professionalism in Indexing: This topic covers a gamut of issues. Should indexers be accredited by a professional society? Many indexers come to the indexing field with impressive training in other fields, they expect professional wages. How does one respond to the inevitable underbidders? Are we (or should we be) accountable for the projects we accept? For example, an indexer in England refused to index one of the "Princess Diana" books on the grounds that it was "damaging trash." Needless to say, the publisher found another indexer who did not have such qualms. How many indexers would turn down work for political or moral reasons? If we as a profession were to formally support such decisions, what would result? Does every document "deserve" an index? I wonder how many indexers have refused to index a document on political grounds? How widespread is this? In closing, there are many issues in indexing that are exciting and others that are worrisome. Indexers today have the opportunity to apply their skills in new media environments such as CD ROM publications. However, as a skill, indexing is undervalued. The marketplace is looking for cheap and quick solutions to information access problems. A couple of weeks ago I was actually asked if I could index in two weeks a CD-ROM that contained the text of ten books! After all, since the text was online, we could generate an indexing automatically... I tried to point out the difference between an authored index and a concordance. The guy just didn't get it -- I'm sure this lovely CD ROM will be coming to a library near you later this year. So, here's a topic I'd like to discuss: What are we (indexers) doing wrong? Why is there so much ignorance about indexing? What can we do about it? -Nancy Mulvany Indexer ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 14:03:28 ECT Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: LIBWCA@EMUVM1.BITNET Subject: Re: Thoughts on Indexing In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 27 Jul 1992 11:39:55 ECT from ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Hello. As a sub-neophyte, I'm afraid I won't have much to give to this group at first, but I'd like to tag along anyway. Anybody have advice for beginners? Are there specific books I should read? Any help is appreciated, Bill Anderson ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 14:04:38 ECT Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: KROVETZ@cs.umass.EDU Subject: Automatic Indexing ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Automatic Indexing vs. Manual Indexing is an old topic in information retrieval. The existing test seem to indicate that they have about the same level of performance. I've heard the arguments about this from the information retrieval community, but never from the viewpoint of professional indexers. When I first heard about it, it didn't make any sense; manual indexing involves intellectual effort - how could the performance be the same as the simple methods used in automatic indexing. I think a plausible explanation is that human indexers are inconsistent, and therefore there is a problem with representation on the indexing side. For automatic indexing, the problem is the wide variety of vocabulary usage, and the user can't think of all the different ways in which a concept can be expressed. Systems like Susanne Humphrey's MedIndEX aim to improve the consistency of manual indexing, so perhaps that will shift the balance, but there's also a lot of room for improvements with automatic methods. My bias is towards the automatic methods, and towards improving them with natural language processing (I'm a computational linguist). I'd welcome any discussion on the topic. Bob krovetz@cs.umass.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 16:07:10 ECT Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "1.7c Revised List Processor" Subject: Delivery error notice sent to list INDEX-L Date: 27 Jul 92 15:10:53 U From: "Carol Roberts" Subject: Re: Thoughts on Indexing To: INDEX-L%BINGVMB.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu, Reply to: RE>Thoughts on Indexing These are all interesting topics. As a copyeditor, my reaction to the question about whether bias can be eliminated in an index is, "SHOULD bias be eliminated in an index?" That is, shouldn't an index be a custom fit, with all the quirkiness-the human touch, if you will-that that implies? Having produced just one electronic index myself, my feeling was that it was a very useful tool, but no more a replacement for a human indexer than a grammar program is for a copyeditor. It will be interesting to see what electronic indexing looks like when it grows up. -------------------------------------- =========================================================================