Back of

the Book Index

(BtBI)/(BoBI)

Khasiah Zakaria

Senior Deputy Chief Librarian

Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam
Malaysia
1
 INDEX (Publishing)
Penting diketahui ialah terdapat 3 bahagian utama struktur buku:

01. Bahagian Depan,

02. Bahagian Isi, dan
03. Bahagian Belakang.

Bahagian Belakang lazimnya terdiri daripada:

• Lampiran
• Glossari
• Indeks
• Rujukan
• Bibliografi
2
 Who are communications
Professionals

Writers The Proofreaders

EFA
Editors Indexers
Job
Copyeditors List Researchers
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 What is an INDEX?

• An index is a list of words or phrases ('headings') and

associated pointers ('locators') to where useful material
relating to that heading can be found in a document.

• In a traditional back-of-the-book index the headings will

include names of people, places and events, and
concepts selected by a person as being relevant and of
interest to a possible reader of the book.

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•The pointers are typically page numbers, paragraph
numbers or section numbers. In a library catalog the
words are authors, titles, subject headings, etc., and the
pointers are call numbers.

• Internet search engines, such as Google, and full text

searching help provide access to information but are not
as selective as an index, as they provide non-relevant
links, and may miss relevant information if it is not
phrased in exactly the way they expect.

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 About indexing
C
capitalization E
A
computer-assisted
indexing. editing indexes
abbreviations
entries.
adjectives and adverbs
See software for See also cross-references;
alphabetization.
indexing headings;
See also non-alphabetical
computer-generated page references
ordering
indexes.
automatic indexing.
See also software for
See automatic indexing
indexing
cross-references

B
D
bad breaks
double-posting
bestsellers
books about indexing
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FAQ (frequently asked questions)
F L
filing. See alphabetization
function words
letter-by-letter sorting.
See alphabetization
locators.
headings. See also function See cross-references;
words; page references
inversion; names; qualifiers H
headnotes. See introductory
notes
N
indexable matter names
indexing process. See also non-alphabetical ordering.
term selection I See also alphabetization
introductory notes
inversion

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P
S T
page references
process. See indexing
see, see also, see term selection
process
professional societies under references.

See cross-references
software for indexing.

See also automatic W

indexing sorting.
Q
word-by-word
See alphabetization sorting.
qualifiers style
quality of indexes
See alphabet

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 Purpose of Indexing

Indexes are designed to help the reader find information quickly and easily.

A complete and truly useful index is not simply a list of the words and
phrases used in a publication (which is properly called a concordance), but
an organized map of its contents, including cross-references, grouping of
like concepts, and other useful intellectual analysis.

Sample back-of-the-book index excerpt:

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sage, 41-42. See also Herbs ← directing the reader to related terms Scarlet
Sages. See Salvia coccinea ← redirecting the reader to term used in the text
shade plants ← grouping term (may not appear in the text; may be generated
by indexer) hosta, 93 ← subentries myrtle, 46 Solomon's seal, 14 sunflower, 47
← regular entry In books, indexes are usually placed near the end (this is
commonly known as "BoB" or back-of-book indexing).

They complement the table of contents by enabling access to information by

specific subject, whereas contents listings enable access through broad
divisions of the text arranged in the order they occur. It has been remarked that,
while "[a]t first glance the driest part of the book, on closer inspection the index
may provide both interest and amusement from time to time." (Collison, 1957)

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 Why do you need to index your
book?
• "Indexes are for readers who want quick access to
information. The index provides a gateway to the
author's ideas: it's the map to the book."
• The back-of-the-book index provides quick access to
ideas found throughout a book. Potential book buyers
know this and prefer to buy books with indexes.
• Amazon.com, book store buyers, librarians, book
reviewers, academics and educators all prefer books
with indexes. Studies have repeatedly shown that
books with quality indexes have increased sales.

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 Why you need an indexer?

Good book can be significantly enhanced by a good index and seriously

weakened by a poor one.
Nevertheless, it seems to be a house rule in publishing, probably for
reasons of cost, that the editor asks and expects the author to create a
book's index.
An author can sometimes produce a good index, many authors are not
well-suited to the task.
Unless an author has previously indexed a book, he or she is unlikely to
have the experience or proficiency, not to mention the time, to create an
index that comes close to the level of quality routinely achieved by an
experienced professional indexer.
Encourage your publishing house to consider hiring a professional indexer.
Authors are, in fact, often glad to have this part of their work done by a
professional, even if it means contributing to the cost themselves.
Certainly it will save authors from a significant distraction at a time when
they will need, instead, to be checking their page proofs for errors and
otherwise focusing on the product of their own writing efforts.
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 Attitude to book indexing

• Involves meticulous hard work,

• Intuition,
• Countless interpretations and judgments.
• Book indexing is more like playing the fiddle:
– some learn how to index reasonably well;
– a few become master indexers;
– but many are baffled by the art and science of
indexing.

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 Opinions: Back-of-the-book index
• Diodato (1994) made a survey of 255 librarians and college
professors and obtained their opinions of three elements of
back of book indexes.
• Both groups overwhelmingly preferred line-by-line
subheadings to the run-on arrangement, even though many
books use the latter format.
• Almost all librarians preferred word-by-word alphabetization
to the letter-by-letter method, but only about two thirds of the
professors shared this preference.
• Strongest disagreement between the two groups occurred
when most of the librarians preferred see references to
duplicate entries, while most professors selected duplicate
entries instead of see references.
• The article concludes that indexers and developers of indexing
standards should consider the preferences of index users.

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 Should authors index their own
books?
• Wishes to learn the details of and then apply the publisher's style sheet for
indexing
• Understands or wants to learn the established principles and standards of
information retrieval (there are many, and they are detailed, often
contradictory or unintuitive and thus many decisions have to be made to
make the index truly useful to the reader, remembering the while that an
index is not an outline)
• Can lead the reader into the book via the index rather than rewriting the
book in the index can express complex ideas concisely
• Owns and knows how to use to fullest advantage software adequate for the
indexing project, remembering that both index cards and a word processor
fail to offer the de-scattering and subentry alphabetizing benefits (among
others) of the three professional software packages
• Can face yet another deadline - remembering that the index cannot be
written when the book is in manuscript form; it requires final pagination to be
completed first. By then the printer date is often set in stone so the index
deadline can be tight
• Can separate her- or himself from the book in order to write the index
instead of revising/rewriting the book yet again

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 Index quality

• Some principles of good indexing include:

– Ensure each of your topics/sections includes a variety
of relevant index entries; use two or three entries per
topic
– Understand your audience and understand what kind
of index entries they're likely to look for
– Use the same form throughout (singular vs. plural,
capitalisation, etc.), using standard indexing
conventions

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 Indexing Pitfalls

• Significant topics with no index entries at all

• Indexing 'mere mentions' --- "But John Major was no Winston
Churchill..." indexed under 'Churchill, Winston'
• Circular cross-references: 'Felidae. See Cats' --- 'Cats. See Felidae'
• References to discussions of a single topic scattered among several
main headings: 'Cats, 50-62' --- 'Felidae, 175-183'
• Inconsistently indexing similar topics
• Confusing similar names: Henry V of England, Henri V of France
• Incorrect alphabetization: 'α-Linolenic acid' under 'A' instead of 'L'
• Inappropriate inversions: 'processors, word' for 'word processors'
• Inappropriate subheadings: 'processors: food, 213-6; word, 33-7'
• Computer indexing from section headings: e.g. 'Getting to know your
printer' under 'G'
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 Indexer Roles
• Specific formats, such as scholarly books, microforms, web
indexing (the application of a back-of-book-style index to a
website or intranet), search engine indexing, database indexing
(the application of a pre-defined controlled vocabulary such as
mesh to articles for inclusion in a database), and periodical
indexing (indexing of newspapers, journals, magazines).
• Expertise in controlled vocabularies, taxonomists and
ontologists.
• Specialize in particular subject areas, such as anthropology,
business, computers, economics, education, government
documents, history, law, mathematics, medicine, psychology,
and technology.

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 Indexing skills
Among them are:

1. Text analysis — an ability to identify significant concepts and themes in a

text and to represent them thoroughly yet concisely with suitably
formulated index terms; also an ability to recognize and ignore
insignificant (passing) mentions of a subject that do not provide the reader
with useful information;
2. Organization — an ability to structure conceptual patterns and
complexities into meaningful heading/subheading sequences;
3. Consistency in cross-referencing and double posting of entries;
4. A dispassionate ability to anticipate the potential needs of the book's
expected audience.
5. Meticulous
6. Deep sense of interests,
7. Read fast and thoroughly
8. Know how to use style sheet
9. Know the boundary of over indexing,

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How to INDEX??

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 Indexing process

• Conventional indexing
• The indexer reads through the text, identifying indexable concepts (those for
which the text provides useful information and which will be of relevance for
the text's readership). Or may use concordances software (see next slide)
• The indexer creates index headings, to represent those concepts, which are
phrased such that they can be found when in alphabetical order .
• These headings and their associated locators (indicators to position in the
text) are entered into indexing list
• The index is then edited to impose consistency throughout the index.
• Indexers must analyze the text to enable presentation of concepts and ideas
in the index that may not be named within the text.
• Always remember that : The index is intended to help the reader,
researcher, or information professional, rather than the author, find
information, so the indexer must act as a liaison between the text and the its
ultimate user.
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 Concordance

• With, you can

• make indexes and word lists
• count word frequencies
• compare different usages of a word
• analyse keywords
• find phrases and idioms

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 Concordances Software
Cobuild Direct (The Bank of English)
http://titania.cobuild.collins.co.uk/direct_info.html
Collins Cobuild English Collocations on CD-ROM

WordSmith v3.0
http://www.liv.ac.uk/~ms2928/
http://www1.oup.co.uk/elt/catalogu/multimed/4589846/4589846.html

Ultra Find Mono Conc

Ultra Find
http://www.ultradesign.com/
Conc
Conc 1.80
http://www.sil.org/computing/conc/
Mono-Conc Pro and MonoConc 1.5
http://www.athel.com/mono.html

Concordance
•http://www.concordancesoftware.co.uk/ 23
 Tips
1.…… expected audience.
2.Teliti …teliti….
3.Minat ….
4.Baca …..back to back
5.Too EXHAUSTIVE…NOT GOOD,
6.MAJOR index should include explaination
7.Use Style sheet – kesilapan m/s add pages,
number , pelik, latin words..(editing process )
…A, B C…COLUMN.

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 Qualifiers

• Qualifiers are words or phrases added to a heading or subheading

to clarify its meaning or to distinguish among homographs. They
may or may not be enclosed in parentheses:
abstracts (abridgments), ...
abstracts (pharmaceutical mixtures), ...
Hippocrates ("Father of Medicine"), ...
Hippocrates of Chios, ...
Louis VIII, ...
Louis IX,

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 Indexing Software
• Macrex was the first back-of-the-book indexing
software package available for professional
indexers. Today, Macrex handles back-of-the-
book indexing, periodical indexes and web
indexing.
• Cindex provides standard features for indexing
books, newspapers and periodicals. These
features include sorting, cross-reference
checking and formatting.
• SKY Index also provides standard features for
back-of-the-book indexing. Advanced features
include autocomplete and "drag-and-drop"
embedding into Microsoft Word documents.
• wINDEX is a simple, economic indexing tool.
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CINDEX by
Indexing Research
180 Varick Street
Suite 1014
New York, New York 10014
Platforms: Windows 95 or higher; Power Macintosh running OS 8.0
or higher
Home page: www.indexres.com  

MACREX by
Macrex Indexing Services
Beech House
Burn Road
Blaydon-on-Tyne
Tyne and Wear NE21 6JR, England
Platforms: Windows 3.1, 95, 98, NT and DOS
Home page: www.macrex.com  

SKY Index Professional by

SKY Software
350 Montgomery Circle
Stephens City, VA 22655
Platforms: Windows 3.1 through XP
Home page: www.sky-software.com  
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 A NOTE ABOUT INDEXING
SOFTWARE
• Indexing software is a tremendous aid to the professional
indexer, but it by no means creates indexes "automatically," any
more than a spelling or grammar checker can edit a text on its
own.
• Beware of vendors who claim that the services of a professional
indexer can be replaced by running a software program on the
text of a book.
• The intellectual and analytical work of indexing is the task of the
human brain, and no software program can duplicate it.
• Indexing programs available to professional indexers can help
the indexer to produce, sort, and manipulate entries; establish
subheading sequences; restyle and amend entries; and keep
track of what has been indexed where. On the other hand, the
indexing add-ons included with word processors and DTP
programs are usually far less efficient as aids to creating a high-
quality index.
• Source from The Editor's Guide on Working with Indexers 28
 Indexing and legal tables creation

• In the editorial and composition side of our business, we

provide expert back-of-the-book indexing using
experienced, professional indexers.
• We also offer an innovative indexing technology called
Apex Integrated Indexing that integrates the back-of-the-
book index with the XML file of the work being indexed.
• This enables the generation of page references to
numerous editions or formats and directly to the
referenced content for electronic publications such as e-
books or online versions.

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 Working with a
Freelance Indexer

• Editorial Freelancer's Association

– http://www.the-efa.org/res/rates.php

• American Society for Indexing

– http://www.asindexing.org/site/editorsguide.sh
tml

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 What Will It Cost?

• Fees vary for each project depending upon various

factors, for example, subject matter, intended
audience, and schedule.
– depth and complexity
– a computer programming manual written for scientists and
engineers will cost more than a book of the same length written on
local history or pet care.
– The level of expertise of the indexer will also be a factor;
established professionals with good reputations cost more than
new indexers who are just starting out.
– by the entry, by the line, or by page of text.
– a fixed rate.

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 Editorial rates: Type of Work Estimated Pace Range of Fees

Type of Work Estimated Pace Range of Fees

Copyediting, basic 5–10 ms pgs/hr RM25–40/hr
Copyediting, heavy 2–5 ms pgs/hr RM35–50/hr
Substantive | line editing 1–6 ms pgs/hr RM40–65/hr
Developmental editing 1–5 pgs/hr RM50–80/hr
Layout | newsletters 1–4 pgs/hr RM40–70/prn pg
Layout | books 6–10 pgs/hr RM45–85/hr
Indexing 8–20 prn pgs/hr RM35–65/hour
RM3.50–12/indexable prn pg
Project management NA RM9.00–20.00/prn pg
RM40–70/hr
Proofreading 5–10 ms pgs/hr RM25–35/hr
Researching NA RM25-50/hr
Translating 300–500 wds/hr 20-50¢/wd
Writing 1–3 ms pgs/hr RM50–100/hr
RM1–RM2/wd
Transcribing variable RM3–RM5/pg 32
NOTE ms = manuscript, prn = printed, pg = page, hr = hour, wd = word
 Fees and Rate

• Fees range from RM2.00 to RM5.00 per index able

page.
• not index able - the material in front of and in back of the
main text is,
• Index able - illustrations, tables, graphs and photos
usually are indexed.
• The rate for your book will be based on
– the subject complexity,
– your index specifications,
– the number of indexes required per text,
– any restrictions on the length of the index and
– how quickly the index is needed.
• request a fee quote based on a chapter or two from the
middle of the book to prepare a trial index
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 Quality Index

• A great index is a work of art composed of many different aspects.

In order to create such an index, here are some questions you need
to ask yourself before indexing
– the style of the index desired,
– the type and size of the work being indexed,
– the intended audience,
– the due dates for both the page proofs and the finished index.
– the details regarding index specifics, for example, format, alphabetization, and
the structure of page ranges.
– cross-references need to be considered and a format decided upon, as well as
what material is not to be indexed.
– details regarding length and depth limitations need to be understood.

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 Alphabetization 1

• Alphabetization is the process of ordering headings in an

index.
• Same meaning with the terms filing and sorting.
• However, those terms are widely used in other fields in
which they have connotations that may be inappropriate
in the field of indexing.
• For example: in other fields, the distinction between
upper and lower case letters is often important in sorting;
in indexing, it never is.

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 Alphabetization 2
• pronunciation and meaning are ignored today in alphabetization.
• In word-by-word alphabetization, each word in a compound
heading is alphabetized in succession and separately.
• If the first words in the headings are equivalent, the second
words are compared. If the second are equivalent, the third are
compared, and so on until the headings are distinguished from
one another.
• In this process, the space character is assigned a value lower
than that assigned to any letter, and it is sorted - word-by-word
alphabetization is often called the nothing before something
system.

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 Alphabetization 3

• In international standards, dashes, hyphens and slashes are

assigned the same value as the space character and other
punctuation marks, such as commas, apostrophes and single or
double quotation marks, are ignored.
• In the Chicago Manual of Style, an important authority in the
American publishing community, hyphens, slashes and
apostrophes are ignored because they are considered to be
characters that continue a word.
• As a result, when the international standards are followed,
displeasure counts as one word but dis-pleasure
counts as two. When the Chicago Manual of Style is followed,
they both count as one word.

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 Sample of letter-by-letter

Strict Chicago-style
letter-by-letter letter-by-letter
Jones, Adam Jones, Adam
Jonesboro Jones, Otis A. (1896-1963)
Jones Mountain Jones, Otis A. (1924-1989)
Jones, Nathan, and Fry Jones, Otis Augustus
Jones, Otis A. (1896-1963) Jonesboro
Jones, Otis A. (1924-1989) Jones Mountain
Jones, Otis Augustus Jones, Nathan, and Fry

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 Sample of word-by-word

Letter-by-letter Word-by-word

soul soul
soulard crab soul brother
soul brother soul food
souletin soul kiss
soul food soul mate
soulful soul music
soul kiss soul sister
soullessness soulard crab
soul mate souletin
soul music soulful
soul sister soullessness

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 If you ask another
person to Index

• Does the author or editor expect certain terms to appear in the

index?
• What is the press style for the index (e.g., run-in vs. indented, page
range style, treatment of figures, special coding)?
• What is the schedule (for the press, author, and indexer)?
• Are there length limitations?
• Will the author review the index before it goes to the press?
• What is the indexer's fee and how will it be paid (by press, perhaps
out of royalties, or by the author)?
• What is the preferred delivery format of the index?

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 Societies

• Indexing Society of Canada

• American Society for Indexing
• Australian and New Zealand Society of
Indexers
• China Society of Indexers
• Society of Indexers
• Nederlands Indexers Netwerk (NIN)
• Persatuan Pengindeks Malaysia ??

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 Indexer Jokes

• OLD INDEXERS NEVER DIE, THEY JUST ........

• passim away
see under six feet
decompile
go back to the contents
go back to page one
repaginate
page away
cross their references
file away
David A. Green
David A. Green
Gil Osgood
Padi Harmon
Padi Harmon
Padi Harmon
Paul Illes
Savannah Barnes
Nancy Cline
Your name here
______________________

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 If we weren't called Indexers, what would we be called?

indicants Lighthousers
gnomonizers Disclosers
indexicalologists Pointers
fistidiographers Hint-givers
catagormaticalsumographers Mapsters
Original Search Engineers Tipsters
Directors Informants
Collectors Triangulators
Inventoriers Highlighters
Search Guides DeNote-rs
Prompters Passworders
Sniffers Neat-Nicks
Enlighteners Flaggers
Information Retrieval Specialists Distillers
Guidance Counselors Tattlers
Indicators Fingerers
Trailblazers Essence-Finders
Telltales Legend Writers
Treasure Mappers Unscramblers
Navigation Experts DeCryption Experts
Topographer extraordinaires Site Sighters
Order-Mongers Bearing Finders
Abcedarians Information Architects 43
Pye-makers Key Coders
 Conventions/principle/
law/standard/custom/practice of
indexing
• headings at all levels are hanging paragraphs;
• subheadings are indented from the hanging
portion of the higher level heading;
• cross-references are separated from headings
and subheadings by a period and space, and
are capitalized and colored, and;
• See also cross-references follow the last
subheading. The hanging paragraph convention
allows the level of the entries to remain obvious
as the window displaying them is re-sized.
44
 References
• Diodato, V. (1994). User preferences for features in back of book indexes. Journal of the
American Society for Information Science, 45(7), 529-536.
Diodato, V. & Gandt, G. (1991). Back of book indexes and the characteristics of author and
nonauthor indexing: Report of an exploratory study. Journal of the American Society for
Information Science, 42(5), 341-350.
Enser, P. G. B. (1985). Automatic classification of book material represented by back-of-the-
book index. Journal of Documentation, 41(3), 135-155.
• Fugmann, R. (2006). Das Buchregister Methodische Grundlagen und praktische Anwendung.
Frankfurt am Main: DGI. (DGI Schrift; Informationswissenschaft - 10).
Grosch, A. N. (1986). Index-aid: Computer assisted back-of-the-book indexing. Electronic
Library, 4(5), 278-280.
• Hornyak, B. (2002). Indexing Specialties: Psychology. Medford, NJ :Information Today, Inc.
• Kendrick, P. & Zafran, E. L. (Eds.). (2001). Indexing Specialties: Law. Medford, NJ
:Information Today, Inc.
• School of Library, archival and information studies, The University of British Columbia.
Indexing resources on the WWW. Back-of-the-Book indexing.
http://www.slais.ubc.ca/resources/indexing/backof2.htm
• Schütze, H. (1998). The Hypertext Concordance: A Better Back-of-the-Book Index. In
Proceedings of Computerm '98 (Montreal, Canada, 1998), D. Bourigault, C. Jacquemin, and
M.-C. L'Homme, Eds., pp. 101-104.
• Stauber, D. M. (2004). Facing the text: Content and structure in book indexing. 1st ed.
Eugene, Or.: Cedar Row Press.
• Towery, M. (Ed.). (1998). Indexing Specialties: History. Medford, NJ :Information Today, Inc.
• Wyman, L. P. (Ed.). (1999). Indexing Specialities: Medicine. Medford, NJ :Information Today,
Inc.
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