The American Society for Indexing held its 2022 Virtual Conference, “The Future of Indexing: A Mix of Art and Technology,” on Friday, April 29, 2022 and Saturday, April 30, 2022. Four sessions were held virtually on Zoom each day.
In the third session on Saturday, Using a Classic to Create a Contemporary Masterpiece, Maria Sullivan presented on how to upcycle the last edition’s index to create the index for a new edition. Indexers are often asked to create an index for a subsequent edition of a publication. The client asks to base the index for the new edition on the index for the previous edition. Indexers often think that starting from scratch will yield better results. Sullivan, however, said that reusing a well-constructed index to an older edition offers significant benefits, such as data entry efficiency and format consistency across a series of publications.
Ideal candidates for index recycling include structured publications with consistent formats, such as textbooks, law books, manuals and handbooks, reference books, encyclopedias, and loose-leaf services. The common characteristic of these publications is that much of the terminology remains unchanged, so that the headings and cross-references of the prior index can be reused by importing the prior index as a plain text or XML file into indexing software.
Criteria to consider in deciding whether to recycle the previous index include the extent of page reflow, whether the new index requires minor additions with scattered changes or a general index update, or whether terms should be combined for a cumulative index. The first step in recycling is a thorough vetting of the previous index to see how well it is structured. The old index should be dissected to identify changes in pagination and relocation of material, and to determine the extent of the new material. She keeps separate files for each part, section, and chapter, and compares old to new, then decides how much of the index to reuse. She recommends frequent backups of the index file at every stage while updating.
In the next blog posting I will discuss the last Saturday session of the ASI 2022 Virtual Conference. For more information about the services provided by the author of this blog, see the Stellar Searches LLC website, http://www.stellarsearches.com.
Tags: book indexing, indexing, recycling, upcycling, Virtual Conference