FLHIG
 

Family and Local History
Indexing Group

Selected articles from the Newsletter

This article first appeared in SIGGNL 19  page ~11 (November 1998)

Indexing of Periodicals - Format of Entries I
by Tony Rydings

Many persons when first attempting to index a periodical and without having any clear idea of what is required will consider that the author and title of each article is a suitable skeleton on which to hang the index. For several reasons, however, this is not a satisfactory approach, chief of which is the fact that the title is often misleading. Writers in family history magazines, for example, often feel compelled to add a touch of humour, but when you find a number of items entitled Where there is a will ... , or What's in a name? it is soon obvious that this is not particularly helpful as a guide to contents. Granted that some articles do have useful titles which can provide the basis for indexing, one hopes that the editors of family history magazines will encourage their contributors to enlighten rather than to entertain in the choice of titles.

The author of an article should be indexed, but it should be clear that his or her name is that of the writer, and not of the subject of the article. The simplest way is to add the title of the article (however un-useful that may be) after the author s name, and this becomes more important if one writer makes several contributions to the same volume. The result might then be:

These items would of course also require subject entries such as Electronic data transmission, Family trees, and PagePlus (computer program). It will be noticed that only the first of these coincides with the title of the article, and in my view there would be no need for a title entry for the second item. Most indexers would prefer the articles to be in alphabetical order, though some editors may insist on page number order.

Use of standard list of subject headings

A decision has to be made before embarking upon an indexing project on whether to make use of a thesaurus, that is a list of subject headings within the range of materials to be covered, or to use free style, based on the vocabulary of the material being indexed. If the index is not expected to extend over several issues or volumes, there is no great advantage in using a thesaurus, but for large-scale operations, such as several volumes of a periodical, improvement in standardization is best achieved by adopting a thesaurus. As SIGG is currently engaged in compiling a list of subject headings for genealogy, I do not propose to discuss this aspect here, and will consider instead the construction of subject headings in general terms.

Structure of entry

As mentioned previously, both personal names and place names may be used as subject headings, but as I have discussed these two categories in a previous article, I will now concentrate on other kinds of entries, and how they may be made up. First then there is the heading, being the word or words by which the entry is arranged, usually alphabetically, and we will not here consider other possible arrangements, such as numerical or classified. It is often more convenient to use a heading with one or more sub-headings, and here we shall find several possible variations, and resultant problems. Finally the entry must contain the reference, or reference locator, which in a book is usually just the page number or numbers, but in a periodical will probably need some further indicator. This will be considered in more detail later.

Choice of subject headings

Let us begin by looking at subject headings, and we have already noted that the entry may consist of one or more than one word. What sort of words may we expect to find used as the entry, and what words should be avoided? Here the indexer has to think about the way in which the user will approach the index, rather than what the indexer sees there. For example, in an article about a family of dairy farmers in North Devon named Nankivell (and here I salute my old army friend Jack) one would expect entries for the family and place names, but what about the subject? The possibilities include agriculture, farmers, farming, and dairy farming. My own preference would be farming, with a reference from agriculture. Although usually it is preferable to choose the more specific term, unless the index contains many entries for farming it would seem unnecessary to distinguish between dairy and other kinds of farming. If, however, the article which is being indexed contains many references to dairy farming, it would be helpful to include that term in the index, with a reference from farming.

Ordering of words in headings

Another general problem is the order in which to enter the words of headings: should one prefer dairy farming, or farming, dairy? The later has the advantage of bringing together similar terms, such as farming, dairy and farming, upland; but it rarely results in a more convenient sequence unless there are many qualified headings of a similar kind, such as

Family historians are of course used to the reversal of entry terms, where surnames are followed by forenames, so the reversal of subjects as shown above will be easily understood. Unless, however, the overall subject is travel, it would probably be easier for most users to look under the direct heading (Air travel, etc.) rather than the reversed sort.

Sub-division of subject headings

With long indexes of genealogical periodicals, subject headings may usefully be sub-divided not only by subject but also by place and by date. This will not be necessary for all headings, but when there are many entries under the same heading, this is the easiest way for the indexer to avoid having long strings of references. Most indexers consider about seven references (page numbers) at the end of an entry to be the most that should be given; beyond this the entry should be broken up by subheadings, such as:

Another question which may arise with very long indexes is whether to sub-divide by date (or other numerical order) in addition to alphabetical division. This may be particularly appropriate with genealogical materials, for example:

Typographical distinctions

In the previous article on kinds of entry, which dealt more with places and persons, some attention was given to the use of typography to distinguish between kinds of entry, such as upper case for personal names, bold for place names, and italics for titles of books and names of ships. It is recommended that these distinctions should be adopted also in any sub-headings, so that the user of the index becomes accustomed to a similar typographical pattern throughout the index. In the final article of this series, the use of standard punctuation and capitalization throughout will also be recommended.

Types of references for periodicals

The present article will conclude with some thoughts on the references at the end of each entry, that is the guidance given to the page(s) on which the text is to be found in the periodical. Unfortunately there is a good deal of variation in the way in which the numbers or issues are described, and it sometimes happens that this changes in the course of a volume, which must be recorded in the index, and probably will need a special note at the beginning of the index.

The simplest arrangement is that adopted by this Newsletter, that is each issue with its own number and its own pagination. Next most frequent is a volume of several issues, but the issues may either have the pages numbered separately (vol 1, no 1, p1-48; no 2, p1-42, etc.) or paged in one sequence (no 2, p49-95). The issues may be numbered or named, such as January to December, or Winter, Spring, etc. With older periodicals publication may be in numbered series (vols 1-10; 2nd ser., vols 1-12, etc).

Index entries should contain exact information as to the pages on which the item is to be found. Usually these will be in the form p4-6, indicating the whole length of the article, but if there is an important reference on only one page, that should be shown, eg p5. Some indexes, particularly in scientific periodicals and academic works, make special reference to footnotes, such as p351, n3, but we are probably not likely to be involved in this sort of detail. It cannot, however, be emphasized too strongly that the correct statement of page references is the mark of a good indexer, for if the wrong page number is given the reference might just as well be omitted. In many indexes space is saved by recording only the first page of each article, but it is preferable to give inclusive paging, as this indicates the length of the article.

Article continues in SIGGNL 20 p.5

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