FLHIG
 

Family and Local History
Indexing Group

Selected articles from the Newsletter

This article first appeared in SIGGNL 23  pages 7 to 12 (February/March 2000)

Indexing Standards as Applied to Genealogy
by Tony Rydings

BS ISO 999:1996 (hereinafter the Standard) has superseded BS 3700 as the U.K. national standard for indexing, and has become the subject of several articles, including that in The Indexer (Good practice in indexing the new edition of international standard ISO 999, by Pat F Booth; 20/3:114, April 1997), though not so far of items on family history. Here follows an attempt at remedying this lack, but it is not possible in one article to cover all aspects of the subject. For convenience I shall follow the same sequence of topics as does the Standard, though some features will be curtailed or omitted.

The Standard begins with three general sections entitled scope, normative references (a list of six other ISOs to which reference is made), and definitions. Of these, the last is the most useful, since any indexer should know the precise meaning of terms such as locator and qualifier, "see" and "see also" cross-references, and the difference between entry and heading, and I am sure that I have often misused such words in SIGGNL. Perhaps one of our contributors might write a brief explanation of these terms, with examples. The next two sections deal with the function and types of index, and although they are not directly relevant to our subject, it is useful to know the range covered by the Standard.

Function of an index

The function of an index is described as "to provide the user with an efficient means of tracing information", and section four goes on to enumerate ten ways in which this may be achieved. The indexer should be able to "analyze concepts treated in the document so as to produce a series of headings". It is rather surprising that the Standard should refer to "the document", when in the earlier section on scope we are told that the Standard "applies to books ... and other written or printed documents, and also to non-print materials such as ... films, sound recordings, video recordings, graphic materials, maps, and three-dimensional objects". The definition of "document" in the Standard, however, does extend its meaning to non-print materials.

Among the other means of tracing information, the Standard mentions that the terms used in the index should be appropriate to the users of the index, and should indicate relationships between concepts. This would apply to genealogical indexes as to other subjects. It is also stated that headings and subheadings should be synthesized into entries, and suggests that this may be achieved by an authority file, of which there is further mention later.

Of the types of index listed in the next section, the three of most concern to indexers of family history are names, personal and geographic, and to a lesser extent titles of cited documents. Details will be mentioned later in this article.

Quality control

The next section is entitled "Quality control", and although the topics covered are not particularly important to family history indexers, attention to such matters should improve the quality of an index. The indexer should be impartial and objective in choosing subjects and headings. They should appreciate what is an appropriate length for the index, related to the amount of detail required. The detail, style and layout of the index should be consistent, which will depend upon establishing an indexing policy and creating an authority file. A good relationship between the indexer and the author [or] publisher is important, and if any conflicts arise, the expected needs of the users of the index should be the deciding factor. Should the indexer notice apparent errors in the text, the publisher should be informed.

Content and general organisation

The following section headed "Content and general organization" is the longest in the Standard, covering eighteen and a half out of 32 pages (excluding the annex and index). The first page deals with coverage, and states that "Indexes should normally cover all matter in the documents", but any significant exclusions should be indicated to the user. In printed documents, matter normally indexed should include introductions, notes, addenda, illustrations and appendixes. Matter not normally indexed includes title pages, dedications, tables of contents, and synopses of chapters. Indexes may include information implicit but not given in the text, such as full names, or dates of events, which may be useful to users. The question of providing a single index or a series of indexes has exercised indexers for many years, and the Standard states a preference for a single index, but suggests circumstances where more than one may be preferred. None are often likely to occur in family history.

Headings and sub-headings

Next, the Standard deals with the representation of concepts in headings and sub-headings, and repeats, no doubt for emphasis, that the choice of concepts depends on the expected needs of the user and the nature of the documents indexed. From here on several examples are provided, but most are not relevant to our subject, so where possible I have substituted others which are closer to family history, and generally I have avoided foreign languages, which are frequently used in the Standard and its examples.

Headings should be specific, to help the users, and the purpose of the document will influence the wording of the heading. A concept that is expressed by different terms, for example by different writers in a periodical, should be consistently represented by one term in the index, with "see" cross-references from alternatives. For example, use the term "nobility", and make "aristocracy see nobility". Linked terms which are normally used together in a heading are so entered with the necessary "see" cross-reference, such as

Homographs and other abiguities

Homographs (terms with the same spelling but different meanings) should be distinguished by the addition of a qualifier, such as

or terms which appear in the text in singular and plural forms, choose only one unless the two forms have different meanings. In English the plural is generally preferred, but in French and German the singular is more common. Headings other than proper names (or nouns in German) should begin with a lower-case letter, not a capital. I myself, however, in common with many other indexers of an earlier generation, habitually use capitals at the start of headings, but not subheadings (see for example the indexes in Collinson’s Book collecting, 1957, or Training in indexing, edited by G. Norman Knight, 1969).

Terms commonly used and consisting of more than one word

Terms commonly used and consisting of more than one word when used as headings should be without inverting, for example

Avoid prepositions in headings

As far as possible avoid using prepositions in headings unless needed to avoid ambiguity, such as

(I have omitted initial capitals here in deference to the Standard.)

Proper names

A lengthy section on proper names and titles of documents follows, and starts with a note that indexers may refer to the cataloguing rules used in libraries in their own country for guidance on the construction of headings for names of persons, places and corporate bodies.

Personal names

The Standard states that "Generally, personal names should be provided in as full a form as possible". Rather contradictorily, the next paragraph says that when preparing a name authority file for indexing multiple documents, indexers should choose the most recent, or most commonly used, form of personal name. This is closer to the cataloguing rules on which I was brought up (AACR, British text, 1967), rather than the fullest form. Examples are given of forms of name headings in various languages, which will not be dealt with here.

The Standard explains how persons of the same name should be distinguished, by addition of details such as dates or occupation, in parentheses, and goes on to deal with corporate bodies. Their names should normally be indexed without transposition, and in as full a form as possible to distinguish between similar names. Transposition may however be used if this would place the main heading more usefully, such as

Geographic names

The next paragraph deals with geographic names, and does not go into as much detail as the AACR, with examples in the Standard mainly concerned with non-English places. Both sets of rules explain how to distinguish between places of the same name, but not very clearly for family historians, who need to distinguish between small localities, perhaps not well known outside their own area. One might for example need to distinguish as follows:

Titles of books

Titles of documents will not occur so frequently in genealogical works, though titles of books or of articles in periodicals will be found in family history journals. There are no clear examples of either in the Standard, for which one must turn to cataloguing rules, though even here the rules for analytical entries and offprints are sometimes inadequate. Again it would be helpful for one of our experts to provide guidance in an issue of SIGGNL.

Locators

What used to be called the reference, page reference or location reference, is now defined in the Standard as a locator, and because the Standard refers to so many types of material, the description of a locator has to be much wider. For our present purpose we shall deal only with printed materials, and the locators are normally either volumes or parts, probably followed by page or pages, though occasionally by paragraphs. The Standard recommends stating first and last numbers in a sequence, and not using "3ff" or "3 et seq". This is as in current cataloguing practice. The Standard states that locators should be taken from numbering of the issues at the time of publication, but this may be difficult when the parts have already been bound into volumes. The following examples are taken from the Standard, showing how to write locators for parts, etc. of periodicals:

In addition to the locators, and usually before it, according to the Standard reference should be made to the title and author(s) of the article, and the title of the periodical (abbreviated, if the meaning of the abbreviation has been explained elsewhere). The following example is not from the Standard, but exactly follows its practices, including punctuation:

The inclusion of an example such as this in the section on locators is confusing, since one might suppose that all this is a locator, whereas the example is correctly an entry, while the four short examples above are locators. If it is desired to emphasize certain parts of an article, such as illustrations, it is suggested that this may be done typographically, e.g. 34, 36, 38-40. I am grateful to Colin Mills for definitions and explanations of locators and equivalent terms, and we are I think agreed that the varying use of this word in 7.4.2.2 of the Standard is ambiguous and likely to confuse.

Cross references

The two kinds of cross-references, "see" and "see also", are dealt with next, and in separate sections. That dealing with "see" cross-references is of no great value, but the "see also" section contains more interesting examples. These cross-references should normally follow the locator (or locators) in an entry, and if they direct to multiple headings, they should be listed alphabetically, and separated by semi-colons, for example:

Arrangement of entries

A further section is devoted to arrangement of entries in indexes, and the difference between filing order and sorting order is explained in some detail. The need for computer software to deal with the requirements of indexers is noted. There are examples of word-by-word and letter-by-letter sequences, and of alphanumeric arrangement. The variations of arrangement illustrated in the Standard are either of subject headings or occasionally of titles (of books, etc.), and so of lesser importance to genealogical indexers.

Presentation

Finally, the Standard deals with presentation of printed indexes, and summarizes what is a fairly complicated process, about which many indexers are relatively ignorant. The article by Drusilla Calvert on "Deconstructing indexing standards" (The Indexer 20/2:74-77 Oct. 1996) covers much the same ground, and suggests alternative practices.

Annex A of the Standard provides a bibliography containing twelve ISO publications and two other related items, and the Standard ends with an index (compiled by Society of Indexers member Janet Shuter) running to 14 pages. Please note the introductory note to the index on page 34.

Study of the Standard would, I am sure, help indexers of family history materials, and it is unfortunate that like all standards it is so expensive (published price GBP58.00).

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