Posts Tagged ‘metatopic’

ASI 2022 Virtual Conference: Indexing the Metatopic

Sunday, September 4th, 2022

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 first session on Saturday,  Indexing the Metatopic–Bridging the Gap Across the Pond, presenter Melanie Gee discussed contradictory practices in the US and the UK of indexing the metatopic: always index the metatopic comprehensively, or never index the metatopic (or if you must, only sparsely).  In her presentation, she referred to the stereotype of tea drinkers, UK, who never index the metatopic, and the coffee drinkers, US, who always index the metatopic.  Based on a survey she conducted with about sixty respondents, she found that practices in both the US and UK are actually quite similar.

She explained that the metatopic is the overarching, main topic of the book.  She said that identifying the metatopic will help you understand the structure and argument of the book.  Every entry in the book is structurally related to the metatopic.

A majority of survey respondents answered that they indexed the metatopic for the last three books they indexed, with slightly more on the US side.  The most common response from UK indexers about not indexing the metatopic was concern about the metatopic being too broad and not wanting to index the whole book at the entry.  US indexers were mostly more concerned about the lack of general information about the metatopic and including only specific, chapter-level topics.

She then discussed different types of metatopics, such as simple, multiple, multifaceted, nebulous, and clustered metatopics, and reviewed methods for handling them in the index.

In the next blog posting I will discuss the second 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.

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Approaches to Indexing the Metatopic

Wednesday, April 15th, 2015

As discussed in the last blog posting, the metatopic will drive the structural development of the index.  The problem with the metatopic is the temptation to over-index the entire document under a single overarching topic or to ignore the direct indexing of the metatopic altogether.  There are two approaches to indexing the metatopic: the traditional approach and the table of contents approach.

In the traditional approach, subheadings that cannot stand-alone in the index are included under the metatopic heading, with cross-references to the most important main headings in the book.  This saves a significant amount of space in the index and adds elegance to the index structure.

The second approach, the table of contents approach, mirrors the structure of the book.  In terms of structure, the index must reflect the text and yet parse the information into a useful, alphabetical format.  A text may be relatively straightforward in organization, for example, tackling one aspect of the metatopic in each chapter with a subheading under the metatopic heading.

For more information on the metatopic and index structure, see the article by Margie Towery, “Metatopic and Structure: Creating Better Indexes, Part 7.” Heartland Chapter of the American Society for Indexing Newsletter, Fall 2014, http://www.heartlandindexers.org/metatopic.html

For more information about the services provided by the author of this blog, see the Stellar Searches LLC website, http://www.stellarsearches.com

 

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Metatopic and Index Structure

Saturday, March 14th, 2015

The metatopic is more than just a characteristic, it is the overarching presence in a book index.  According to Webster’s, meta- means more comprehensive than the original term.  Often used with a discipline, such as linguistics or mathematics, it highlights a discussion in which the discipline itself is the object of critical examination.  The term metadata describes “data about data.”   Do Mi Stauber applies it to the main subject of a text, describing it as the structural center of the index, in which every single heading is implicitly related to it. The structure of an index includes the entry points as headings (and ideas which are more or less important to the metatopic), as well as the cross-references in a system that lies underneath the entry points.  The index structure builds bridges between the user and the content, with the goal of navigation, user satisfaction, guiding retrieval, and discovery.

The metatopic will drive the structural development of the book index.  The ever present problem with metatopics is the temptation to over-index the entire document under a single overarching topic or to ignore the direct indexing of the metatopic altogether.  There are two approaches to indexing the metatopic, which I will discuss in detail in my next blog posting.

For more information about metatopic and index structure, see the article by Margie Towery, “Metatopic and Structure: Creating Better Indexes, Part 7.” Heartland Chapter  of the American Society for Indexing Newsletter, Fall 2014, http://www.heartlandindexers.org/metatopic.html

For more information about the services provided by the author of this blog, see the Stellar Searches LLC website, http://www.stellarsearches.com

 

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