Comments on: Indexing, Tagging, and Other Locating or Scanning Devices

By: Jonathan Gray

Jonathan Gray — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 04:37:09 +0000

ahem, I wrote “The index can be a place to see what sort of terms and what sort of individuals hold sway over a book [....] Who and what are the book’s ’sponsors’?”, so yeah, I agree with your first par. that this is a really important use for indexes. As I wrote that bit about “sponsors,” I thought of Sesame Street episodes and the letters or numbers that sponsored it

And I agree it would be fascinating to see how different an index by someone else would look. Indeed, I’d love to see three or four competing indexes to illustrate the point. Alas, there would go my semblance of royalties

By: Jason Mittell

Jason Mittell — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 03:09:01 +0000

Behind on my blog reading, so I just read this. A couple of things come to mind: you didn’t mention one of the primary ways that indexes are used for academic titles – a short-cut to see the theoretical influences and models used in a book. I remember in grad school, this is one of the main ways I mapped the field, seeing what work was mostly Marxist vs. Foucauldian vs. pomo, etc. (And of course now that we’re published authors ourselves, the index is an analog equivalent to self-Googling!)

Another thing that comes to mind is that although it may not be monetarily advisable to pay for an indexer, it is really eye-opening to see how someone else categorizes your book. I hired a student to index my recent book, and it was quite interesting to see how she categorized the content. Maybe not worth the money if you don’t have a funding source, but it does shine a light on your own writing in a way that neither the author nor Wordle can.

By: The Chutry Experiment » Sunday Notes

The Chutry Experiment » Sunday Notes — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 17:48:35 +0000

[...] Jonathan Gray has an interesting post discussing the challenges of indexing his book. I faced many of these questions myself last [...]