Speech
WILSON AWARD ACCEPTANCE SPEECH, May 13, 2004
Thank you. I have been writing H. W. Wilson Award acceptance speeches in my head for years, but I was safe, because I never submitted an index for judging. Then last year, I knew I had done a good index to Anglo-American Cataloguing Code, Revised Edition, 2002 revision, 2003 update. (AACR2 to its friends) And I knew all the work my publisher had done over many years to make this book and this index excellent. So here I am. Since AACR2 touches on both cataloging and indexing, I told Janet Perlman I would talk about the differences between indexing and library cataloging.
First of all, though, I do want to honor my publishers, ALA Editions, especially Mary Huchting and Troy Linker, for editing above and beyond the call of duty. What they did went far beyond making sure there were continuation lines at the top of each column. They pushed for a completely new index to AACR2 and they defended my index against all comers. The authors were aghast at typographical errors, so my pride took a beating at times. But Mary has the gift of telling me I’m wrong and making me thank her for it. You couldn’t find a better editor. ALA Editions really deserves this award, and the fact that it comes from H. W. Wilson—the Reader’s Guide people!—makes it that much more exciting.
As far as I am concerned, it was an honor just to be asked to index AACR2. AACR2 is the Bible of the library world. It specifies how anything from books (excuse me, printed monographs) to web sites all over the English-speaking world is listed in library catalogs. To carry the metaphor a bit farther, it is the Leviticus of the library world: It’s full of picky little rules that serve the greater glory. If I have made AACR2 easier to use for the harried catalogers of the world, I have made a contribution to the spread of knowledge throughout the land.
This affirmation of my indexing skills means much to me. I am a self-taught indexer. Although I was trained as a librarian, and worked as a reference librarian for almost twenty years, my only interest in cataloging was in being better able to find the works catalogers had “hidden” in the catalog. And then my employer, thinking any librarian can index, assigned an index to me and I found out: I could do it. I could make my own rules! And I didn’t have to wear shoes while doing it!! “Have Cindex, Will Stay at Home” became my motto. At first, I was making it up as I went along, but I read as much as I could and took every workshop my ASI chapter offered. I can admit now how much I was bluffing when I told Mary’s predecessor at ALA Editions, “Of course I can index for you. After all, I’m a librarian.”
The skills required for both jobs are similar, especially the attention to detail and the ability to analyze a communication and pick out the most important concepts. But there are enough differences that one can be successful at one without being able to grasp the other. (I have reindexed way too many of ALA’s author-librarians.) After all, if an index or catalog is done well, it is transparent. Users find what they want without noticing the exquisite wording of the subentries, or the clever way in which all the editions of Huckleberry Finn are found together. I’m sure everyone here tonight has used libraries all their lives, but how many would recognize a uniform title? Similarly, librarians may use indexes every day without realizing the structure and consistency of the entries.
Actually—another confession—I’m still not quite sure what “structure” means. I use it for the strategy I use for choosing the things I will index and the things I won’t. Since this was the first time an outsider (not a member of the committee that oversees AACR2) had written the index, Mary had me write a long outlining what I planned to do—it came to seven pages. It helped me articulate a process that is mostly intuitive and provided a ground when disagreements arose. The primary consideration is, “Will this index entry serve the needs of the user?” For me, indexing is like the game show Jeopardy: The text gives the answer, say, “Transcribe the edition statement as found in the item.” and the question is: “Edition statement, transcription of?” Is there another question?: Is anybody going to look under “transcription”? Naa.
Librarians are trained to find answers to questions. Indexers look for the question. It’s a different mindset. Many of the challenges of this index came out of the differences between indexing and cataloging. Catalogers are trained to look for certain specified pieces of information: “title proper”, “statement of responsibility”, and (my favorite) “other title information.” (It files under “other”) Each piece of cataloging data has to go in a particular place in the record. So the authors were concerned that I had “Irish language, initial articles” (all on one line) but for Italian language, I made “initial articles” a subentry. Well, Italian language had other subentries. (That’s Do Mi’s rule #2.) As Fred Leise’s law famously declares, in indexing, there are no rules, only contexts. Each back-of-the-book index is carefully, lovingly handcrafted to the needs of the work in hand. Terminology follows the usage of the author, not a pre-defined standard list of headings. The structure selected for the index will reflect the needs of the users for that particular work. To the catalogers, it must have seemed as if I were still making it up as I went along. Certainly when following my initial guidelines made the index unbalanced, I changed my approach. AACR2 is a multi-author work and we all know what that means.
Catalogers also want to serve the needs of the users, but they don’t have the freedom to customize the entries the way I do. Library catalogs have many times more entries than the densest back-of-the-book index. The rules in AACR2 have been developed over the years to serve the needs of the majority and catalogers have to follow the rules, even if they don’t exactly fit the work in hand. Keeping a consistency with the entire intellectual heritage of the English-speaking world is a goal of AACR2. Thank God librarians are there to do it. Every rule is the result of debate and compromise. Changes are not made lightly.
Take, for example, Rule B.9 Roman Alphabet Abbreviations. The committee wanted me to add “French language abbreviations” to this locator. “But,” I protested, “If I added French abbreviations, I’d have to add all other languages included in this list.” (That’s Do Mi’s first rule) “and—since you don’t actually say there are French abbreviations in this rule—the users couldn’t be sure they’d found the right place.” (That’s my principle of safe arrival) “If you rewrote the rule so that all the languages were named, I’d index it.” They looked at one another and sighed. “Someone would have to introduce a resolution to change the rule.” I could tell. It wasn’t going to happen.
Thank you again, H. W. Wilson and the Wilson Award committee. Thank you, Joint Steering Committee, Most of all, thank you, Mary and Troy. This one’s for you!