Earlier in the year, I wrote a blog post lamenting the fact that the textbook for IST 511, The Atlas of New Librarianship, did not have a traditional index. Naturally, Professor Lankes suggested that perhaps I should create one if I was looking for a challenging project. Since I have been taking a course on indexing, I thought, “Well, maybe I could try indexing a chapter or two during Christmas break.” Over the course of the semester, however, I have discovered just how difficult creating an index can be.
The final project for IST 638 involves building a set of indexes for a television show or newsletter, deciding on indexing policies and conventions, creating a thesaurus to be used for future indexing, and evaluating the results of this work. At first I thought “That sounds like fun!” After I got into it I thought “This is more difficult than I expected.” And lately I have been thinking “%#$!& indexing project! I will never watch Doctor Who again!”
Each decision that I made for this project had ramifications that I didn’t foresee. I would make a decision about the scope or indexable matter, what kind of locators to use, or what types of indexes to include, plod along for a while and then run into a problem. What constituted a character in the character index? Did they have to speak or appear on screen? If a character said one line and then disappeared, should they be included? What about character names – do I go by the name in the credits or use that name that they are called in the dialog? The decisions went on and on.
I am sure that when I have gained the proper distance from this experience, I will once again find Doctor Who enjoyable and attempting to index a chapter or two of The Atlas will seem like a good idea. But not right now. Maybe during summer break…
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