174 the Indexer Vol

REVIEWS edited by Philip Bradley Indexing and indexes — mainly cataloguing, classification and indexing. Mary Piggott contributes an informative chapter entitled Some Post-War Developments in Indexing in Great Britain in which the Society of Brief Entry: a newsletter for Law Indexers. Edited by E M Moys. Indexers gets a couple of pages to itself. Other technical services Scvenoaks, UK: E M Moys. First issue 1996. ISSN 1362-7929. surveyed include acquisitions and preservation, together with a chapter Subscription: £10.00 (sterling area), $15.00 (elsewhere). on technical services in school libraries. Unfortunately, perhaps, all the This is the first issue of a continuing newsletter for all law indexers material in the volume pre-dates 1993 — due to circumstances for which and other people interested in good law publishing, wherever they may the editors take all the blame. The subtitle indicates the historical nature be. The editorial team consists of indexcrs from four countries of the treatment and an interesting chapter on Indexing in Theory and (Australia, Canada, United Kingdom and the United States) and the Practice gives us 15 pages of useful background, together with 58 contents reflect the usual format for specialised newsletters — articles, bibliographical references. news items and letters to the editor. Two of the articles are concerned Immediate reaction to the index to the volume centres on its strings with beginners in indexing — in the first, novice indexer Margaret of undiffcrentiated page numbers (the old, old tale), the unthinking see Atkinson tells of her first introduction to indexing and her experience references where double entries would have been preferable and the with the Society of Indcxcrs' training course; in the second article, occasional use of adjectives as main headings. It gives the impression experienced law indexer and Whcatlcy Medal winner Betty Moys give of having been passed through a computer program rather than a human some very practical advice on how to become a good law indcxer. This mind. The heading Indexing has 22 page references, followed by a article is to be continued in later issues of Brief Entry. further 21 attached to 18 subheadings (although this second group of 21 Two further articles give insights into the experiences and methods of does not repeat any of the first group at the main heading — brownie working of established law indexers. Robert Spiccr tells of an points for that perhaps!). The heading Holy Grail refers to the following unfortunate experience with an eccentric professor/ author (exaggerated sentence on p. 175:'... in 1970 it (a journal article) was called, the latest 'for the sake of entertainment', but only too real as most of us can vision of the Holy Grail'. However, perhaps one should not draw testify). In Passing the Burden, Moira Greenhalgh describes her method attention to these things. Perhaps we should accept the trade-off of less of sub-contracting/ apprenticeship which has enabled novice indexers relevance for more recall. Quantity not quality. to gain experience in law indexing, while also relieving the over-worked Explorations in Indexing and Abstracting is written by an Assistant law indexer of the more routine and straightforward tasks (proofreading Professor in the School of Library and Information management at of index galleys and the preparation of tables of cases and statutes) Emporia State University, Kansas. Focusing on the ways people seek which require 'basic intelligence, ... incredibly accurate typing and a information, the book examines the basic question of how to design high boredom threshold'. indexes and abstracts so that they turn out to be as user-friendly as A newsletter for law indcxers is very much needed — law indexing possible. 'Grappling with the question, "What is it about?" ... is at the is a very specialised and often very difficult field, but it can be very heart of this book. Its stimulus is the thesis that no matter how facile the lonely and it is often clouded in needless mystique. Hopefully, this retrieval system, substantial failures result because of fundamental newsletter will provide a much needed opportunity and space for debate, differences between the manner in which documents have been argument and exchange of useful information, and the experiences, represented and the manner in which searchers represent their questions' problems and insights of law indexcrs in various jurisdictions will be (Preface). The work is not intended to be a manual of good practice in reflected in its pages. It will depend on support and contributions from indexing and abstracting but an attempt to put the user in the driving its readership for it to develop into a useful forum for law indexers, but seat. Whether this is entirely possible is a matter for discussion and if it does so, it will be well worth the £10 subscription. argument and much effort in the past has gone into presenting recondite Julitta Clancy, freelance indexer theories which run the risk of being so abstract as to be almost incom prehensible. The author of the present work cannot entirely escape the charge of breaking a butterfly on the wheel and some passages in the Technical services management, 1965-1990: a quarter century of book exhibit that prolix periphrasis which often seems to characterise change and a look to the future. Festchrift for Kathryn Luther scholarly research. To put it another way: he goes to a lot of trouble to Henderson. Linda C Smith, Ruth C Carter, eds. New York, NY and make simple points. Nevertheless, the book makes interesting and London: Haworth Press, 1996. xv, 370 pp. 22 cm. Index. ISBN stimulating reading and is recommended for practising indexers and 1-56024-960-9 (cased): $39.95. abstractors as a means of removing their noses from the grindstone and lifting their heads for a few deep breaths of more rarified air. Explorations in indexing and abstracting: pointing, virtue and The index to the book has a narrative introduction running to over half power. Brian C O'Connor. Englcwood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, a page. The following is an extract offered without comment: Inc., 1996. xiii, 182 pp. 24 cm. Ilius. bibliog, index. ISBN 1-56308-184-9 (cased): $37.50 ($45.00 outside North America). The entire book was put through a word-extraction program similar to that explained in the text, stripping stop-list words, yet leaving a The processes of cataloguing, indexing and classification are essential to the retrieval of information. They have traditionally formed the core list of many thousands in place. These remaining words were of professional librarianship and, even in these days of computerised alphabetized and their addresses within the book sorted. Each and information handling, remain vital for aspiring practitioners. Many every word was examined with an eye to its likely utility in the texts.therefore, which are written by and for librarians are grist to the index. mill of this journal and these two are typical examples. Both are Some words, such as book, document, collection, patrons, research, American and both are produced with practising librarians and students system and word appear with such frequency that they are of little of librarianship in mind. value in guidance. Some index entries do not list every instance of Technical Services Management is a festschrift for Kathryn Luther the listed word. Some significant words are also used in examples Henderson of the University of Illinois and consists of 20 essays by or in lcss-ihan-significant ways in some parts of the text. different hands on the various aspects of technical services in libraries Geoffrey Dixon,formerly Craigie College of Education 174 The Indexer Vol. 20 No. 3 April 1997 REVIEWS Indexes: writing, editing, production. Virginia S Thatcher. Lanham, not-infrequent assumption that it is an activity that will not prove too MD and London: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1995. xiv, 164 pp. 22 cm. taxing for authors' wives (never husbands, for some reason), suggest Bibliog, index. ISBN 0-8108-2990-8 (cased): £37.55. (Distributed in that anyone could earn easy money as an indexer. UK by Shclwing Ltd., 4, Pleydell Gardens, Folkestone, CT20 2DN). The would-be indexer can now dispel such misconceptions by Indexing from A to Z. Hans H Wellisch. 2nd edn., revised and studying Unit B of the SI open learning course and really getting to grips enlarged. New York, NY and Dublin: H.W. Wilson Co., 1996. xxix, with the nuts and bolts of the indexing process itself. Although retaining 569 pp. 24 cm. Bibliog, index. ISBN 0-8242-0882-X (cased): $40.00 the basic structure of the first edition, the publication has been (US and Canada; $45.00 elsewhere). extensively revised. There has been some rearrangement of material, the basics of alphabetical order (covered more fully in Unit C) are now The author of Indexes: writing, editing, production, has presumably briefly outlined and most topics are discussed in considerably more wished to pass on to others her lifetime's experience as editor, indexer detail, so much so that the unit has almost doubled in size. and publisher. Her book, she says, 'proposes a methodology and technique for preparing a quality back-of-book index suited to the With its wealth of examples and case studies, a particular strength of Pat Booth's revision to this text is her detailed treatment of the subject of the book within the limits imposed by costs and the publishing schedules'. intellectual process of indexing, the actual choice of entries, a topic that frequently receives insufficient attention. She not only clearly sets out Her approachlhroughout is practical. It is that of the publisher's editor, the principles underlying the choice of entries but also includes brief based entirely on American practice and limited generally to her own textual extracts with their relevant index entries.

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