By Do Mi Stauber, Winner of the 2007 H.W. Wilson Award for Excellence in Indexing
“Facing the Text” is an in-depth guide to real indexing practice. Based on Do Mi Stauber’s popular and empowering workshop, the book discusses such standard topics as subheadings, cross-references and indexability, in the context of particular texts and indexes. Hundreds of examples illustrate the many practical strategies that Do Mi has drawn from her own practice in social sciences and humanities indexing. The book goes beyond abstract rules to confront the unique needs of each text and index, and provides guidelines to help novice and experienced indexers alike make common-sense, flexible, and reader-centered decisions.
You will learn such strategies as:
• addressing the main topic of the book in your index structure
• pinning down the elusive main argument of a scholarly book
• using local main topics to understand the structure of the text
• deciding which topics should be indexed
• understanding subheadings, with a new typology created by Do Mi Stauber and Nancy Mulvany
• choosing subheadings for long spans and locator strings
• deciding when to use the author’s wording, when to modify it, and when to create a new wording
• connecting topics in the index through double-posting and cross references
• distinguishing among indexing strategies for scholarly books, textbooks and reference books
Click here to see the book’s index.
I welcome feedback and input about this book. How have you solved the same indexing challenges? What additional issues would you like to see addressed? How does your own process differ from mine? What interesting examples have you discovered in your own indexing? The more we discuss these issues of content and structure, the more our collective knowledge will grow.
For more information, e-mail Do Mi or call 541-510-6450.