HOW I INDEX
Just as every book is different, every index is different. The way I will tell what are the significant issues and terms in the field will be to read the book from beginning to end. Yes, indexers really do read the book. I think some people think an index begins with having a list of terms that should be in the index and searching through the text for those occurrences. (Supposedly, having a PDF helps, although in my experience it is harder to pick up subtleties from a PDF and it takes longer anyway.)
I start by reading the introduction carefully. Most books begin with a statement of the author’s argument: “In this book I reexamine the political and ecological repercussions of building a house of bricks. Technological advances in brick construction in the last century resulted in the deforestation of the foothill region and a disastrous imbalance in predator-prey relationships in the central valley. The recently-discovered B. B. Wolf papers give us a new insight into this misunderstood canine. In chapter 2 I review the earlier construction techniques of straw. In chapter 3 I examine stick construction and sustainable agriculture. In chapters 4 and 5 I analyze the dynamics of the Pig family relationships, particularly in regard to Third L. Pig’s role in spreading the rumor that First L. Pig’s unfired straw-and-clay adobe was unsafe in order to encourage sale of his own kiln-fired bricks.”
I also look for an indication of the intended audience for the book. Is the book written for botanists or for political scientists? Is the intended audience other experts in the field, who can be expected to know what suidae are, or is this a book for undergraduates or the intelligent lay reader who may not yet know all the technical jargon in the field? For these readers, I might add a cross-reference (pigs. See suidae) or a gloss (suidae (pigs)). I consider the person who has not yet read the book, who will be looking in the index to see what topics of interest are covered. I also think about the person who has read the book and is trying to find a particular passage again. If necessary, I will index every mention of the members of your tenure committee (just let me know). I begin to formulate a strategy for what I will index and what I will pass by. As I read, I will be looking for ideas like deforestation, technology, predator-prey relationships, straw construction, Pig family, Wolf family, along with specific individuals and events relevant to the topic of the book. I enter these terms in my indexing software, which obligingly alphabetizes them for me. That’s about half the job. The other half is editing the index so that points made in slightly different ways in different chapters get gathered together under one entry.
A good part of the index will be names and places. I will pick out the names that are related in some way to the main topic of the book. Not all names are important. For example, if chapter 2 begins, “The mud bricks the ancient Egyptian architect Imhotep used to construct the tomb of Djoser still survive, but all traces of F. L. Pig’s 1850 mud-and-straw house have disappeared, obliterated by his brother’s goon squads. For years B. B. Wolf was blamed for the disaster...” There will be entries for “Pig, First L.” and “Wolf, Big B.” but none for Imhotep or Djoser.
Sometimes, when I explain that I did not index something because it was a passing mention, the author will protest, “But, someone might be interested in it.” Yes, this book might have an allusion to the incident described in Exodus 5:7-9 where Pharaoh forces the Israelites to make bricks without straw. Yes, it’s interesting; in fact, there is much to be said about brick making in ancient and modern Egypt. But if I were looking for information on Imhotep or Egypt I wouldn’t start with a book on political corruption in nineteenth-century California. I index what is important to this book. A longer index, padded with lots of extraneous entries, is not necessarily a better, more useful index.