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Indexes Praised and Indexes Censured are extracted from Indexes
Reviewed, a regular feature in The Indexer.
These extracts from reviews do not pretend to represent a complete
survey of all reviews in journals and newspapers. We offer only a
selection from quotations that members have sent in. Our reproduction of
comments is not a stamp of approval from the Society of Indexers upon
the reviewer’s assessment of an index.
Ashgate: The responsive museum: working with audiences in the twenty-first century, by Caroline Lang et al (2006, 296 pp, £55). Rev. by Diana Dixon, Library and Information Update, 6(3), March 2007.
Sadly, this otherwise excellent book is not well served by its index, which fails to cover many of the museums cited.
Australian Scholarly Publishing: Abundance; buying and selling in postwar Australia, by Amanda McLeod (2007, 348 pp, Aus$44). Rev. by Stephen Saunders, Canberra Times, 2 June 2007.
McLeod’s reasonable conclusion is that ‘consumerism is not a social movement like feminism or environmentalism’ but ‘came to mean the accumulation of goods’. She is not a natural prose stylist and the book has minor inconsistencies of editing and indexing. But hers is a valuable study guided by evidence and not dogma.
Book Guild: A history of Britain’s hospitals and the background to the medical, nursing and allied professions, by G. Barry Carruthers and Lesley A. Carruthers (440 pp, £18.50). Rev. by Irvine
There is an index of illustrations, there is a short and unsatisfactory general index, and a brief and decidedly eccentric bibliography.
Cambridge University Press: British poetry in the age of modernism, by Peter Howarth (2005, 224 pp, £45). Rev. by Dominic Hibberd, Times Literary Supplement, 2 February 2007.
... the index is annoyingly skimpy (there’s no entry for [John Middleton] Murry, for example, and very few for the modern critics who figure here and there in the text) . . .
Cambridge University Press: The Cambridge history of Judaism, vol. 4: The late Roman-Rabbinic period, ed. by Steven T Katz (2006, 1,135 pp, £120). Rev. by Stefan C. Reif, Times Literary Supplement, 23 February 2007.
Specialists will, of course, be able to judge for themselves, but the volume would have benefited from some editorial guidance . . . Moreover, one general index to cover such a vast undertaking is bound to be inadequate. To cite only one example: the fragments from the Cairo Genizah justifiably receive regular mentions throughout the volume, but there is no reference at all in the index. ‘Genoim’ gets a mention on page 1,095, but what is meant is ‘Geonim’. Sources, names and subjects surely warranted independent indexing.
Cambridge University Press: The medieval world of Isidore of Seville: truth from words, by John Henderson (2005, 244 pp, £55). Rev. by Emily Wilson, Times Literary Supplement, 3 August 2007.
The Etymologies [of Isidore] is not only (as Henderson notes) a ‘work of reference’, but also a perfect lavatory book. Henderson begins his own work with a citation from Roget’s Thesaurus: ‘I believe that almost everyone who uses the book finds it more convenient to have recourse to the Index first’. It is a pity that Cambridge University Press did not check the index and other references in Henderson’s own book more thoroughly. I noticed a significant number of small errors, without even looking for them: for instance, he cites 3.20. 1-2 instead of 3.19. 1-2; the index gives the discussion of Hispania at 14.2.28 rather than 14.4.28. This kind of sloppiness does a major disservice to the reader who finds herself unable actually to read Henderson, but who wants to dip and glance back to Isidore every so often.
Cambridge University Press: Shakespeare’s humanism, by Robin Headlam Wells (2005, 278 pp, £48). Rev. by Andrew Hadfield, Times Literary Supplement, 15 June 2007.
Moreover, many examples are reused, so that Catherine Belsey is told off twice for claiming that Shakespeare is ‘a Saussurean avant la lettre’ (neither citation appearing in the index) . . .
Continuum: A heart in my head: a biography of Richard Harries, by John S. Peart-Binns (2007, 288 pp, £20). Rev. by John Whale, Church Times, 9 March 2007.
... the index is incomplete.
Duke University Press: Good bread is back: a contemporary history of French bread, the way it is made, and the people who make it, by Steven Laurence Kaplan (2007). Rev. by Bee Wilson, Times Literary Supplement, 8 June 2007.
A magnificent combination of polemic and scholarship (marred only by an inadequate index).
Faber: The letters of Robert Lowell, ed. by Saskia Hamilton (2005,852 pp, £30). Rev. by William Logan, Virginia Quarterly Review 81 (4), Fall 2005.
The notes have been left unindexed, which makes it almost impossible to find anything mentioned there; and the index, which suffers some of the usual problems, has a few peculiar to itself. Enough cavils. [Oh, go on, cavil away.]
Four Courts: The medieval manuscripts of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, ed. by Raymond Gillespie and Raymond Refaussé (2006, 192 pp, £50). Rev. by A. S. G. Edwards, Times Literary Supplement, 18 May 2007.
The index is signally inadequate, not least because there is no index of manuscripts.
Getty: Thesaurus cultus et rituum antiquorum (six vols) (2005, 3014 pp, $1215). Rev. by James Davidson, London Review of Books, 19 July 2007.
I had hoped that the index would provide some kind of tug to pull this Titanic to shore, but it turned out to be a list of cities and museums where the objects pictured can be found. Not much hope should be placed in a further index to be published only after a newly announced third level, ‘Synthesis’, has been added to ‘Dynamic’ and ‘Static’, organised according to occasion and daily life.
Gower: Making knowledge visible: communicating knowledge through information products, by Elizabeth Orna (2007, 212 pp, £29.95). Rev. by Stuart Ferguson, Australian Academic and Research Libraries, 38(1), March 2007.
Information architecture is mentioned only in passing and the indexing is poor. Managers may derive some value from this but it is unlikely to become a teaching resource.
HarperCollins: The Reagan diaries, ed. by Douglas Brinkley (2007, 784 pp, £30). Rev. by Edward N. Luttwak, Times Literary Supplement, 27 July 2007.
The index is unacceptably cursory and full of mistakes, so that Selwa ‘Lucky’ Roosevelt and Lucky Roosevelt both appear, while the one Kirkpatrick listing covers two of them.
Haus Books: L. S. Lowry: a life, by Shelley Rohde (2007, 260 pp, £25). Rev. by Grevel Lindop, Times Literary Supplement, 29 June 2007.
... essentially a greatly shortened version of the same author’s L. S. Lowry: A biography, published in 1999 . . . . Unlike the 1999 text, this one lacks a proper index, supplying merely an ‘index of names’.
Landscape Research Centre: The Grubenhaus in Anglo-Saxon England, by Jess Tipper (2005, xi + 208 pp, £35). Rev. by Stuart Brookes, Medieval Archaeology, 50(2006).
... just why the volume has to be printed in such a small font size and without a proper index remains a mystery.
Allen Lane: Rome and Jerusalem: the clash of ancient civilizations, by Martin Goodman (2007, 639 pp, £25). Rev. by David J. Goldberg, The Independent, 26 January 2007.
It is to be hoped that any reissue of this masterly account - with a shortened first half - will include a proper bibliography and an amplification of the current derisory index.
Libraries Unlimited: Emanuel Goldberg and his knowledge machine (2006, 380 pp). Rev. by Allen Veaner, College & Research Libraries, 68(1), January 2007, pp. 83-88.
The index, obviously the work of an unqualified amateur, is an abomination. Several entries are not in correct alphabetical sequence and some even contain misspellings, e.g., Kalingrad for Kaliningrad, cited within the entry Koenigsberg. There are no entries for some important personal names and none for certain concepts vital to understanding Goldberg’s scientific work, e.g., intellectual property rights, even though this topic and other unin dexed concepts are discussed at some length in the text. The Deutsches Museum in Munich is mentioned in the text as ‘the most important technology museum in the world at that time,’ but the world famous institution does not merit an index entry in this technology-centered work. After Goldberg settled in Palestine, he researched the impact of sunlight on home construction materials, and chose insulating and reflective components that would provide his family with ‘comfortable housing,’ as indicated in a subheading in the table of contents. Apparently, the ‘indexer’ simply transferred that heading from the table of contents into the index despite the unsuitability of such a term. Who would look in the index for comfortable hous ing totally isolated from the entry for Goldberg himself? And what of injured leg, another isolated entry that would be a better subentry under Goldberg’s own name? One index entry reads Bosch (company) but there is another entry for the same entity under Robert Bosch (company). But there is no cross reference and both entries point to the same portions of the book. There is a single index entry for DIN 4512, a reference to film speed. But that entry does not relate DIN to the parent organization, the Deutsches Institut für Normung (in translation, the German Standards Institute). There is an index entry for the English name, but none for the German name.
The numerous index deficiencies are somewhat of an irony, given that Libraries Unlimited has published several editions of a major work on indexing. (It may be gratuitous, however, to observe that this publisher’s book on indexing contains many errors and was itself not well received by professional indexers who reviewed it.) Michael Buckland, a distinguished, internation ally renowned scholar has been ill-served by his publisher and by his editor, if indeed there was an editor. There is no acknowl edgement of any editorial assistance and little evidence of any real care in preparing the book for the press. Editorially, there is a colossal qualitative difference between Buckland’s meticulously done JASIS article and his book and the difference substantially favors the former. Goldberg and Buckland deserve far better than what they received from Libraries Unlimited and so do scholars, students, and other readers. It is a travesty of scholarship that this substantial work on library and information science, likely to be Professor Buckland’s valedictory, and issued by one of the princi pal publishers in the field, should be filled with so many egregious errors, omissions and other editorial faults. Can one hope that Libraries Unlimited will one day republish this wonderfully informative book with proper, competent editorial support? That is the least that Michael Buckland, Goldberg’s career, and the entire community of scholars of library history and technology deserve.
Macmillan: A history of modern Britain, by Andrew Marr (630 pp, £25). Rev. by Simon Garfield, The Observer, 27 May 2007.
And another trivial complaint: there is a very inadequate index for this sort of enterprise, unless it was meant as some sort of wry comment on the postwar slump in editorial standards. But hey, as us modern Anglo-Americans like to say, you can’t have everything.
Rev. by David Hare, The Guardian, 19 May 2007.
... 630 pages with a fallible index . . .
Marr on indexes
Andrew Marr, ‘Curling up with a good ebook’,
The Guardian, 11 May 2007.
Miegunyah Press: Diversity and discovery: the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute 1965-1996, by Sir Gustav Nossal (2007, xii + 305 pp, AUD $45). Rev. by Arthur Lucas, Reviews in Australian Studies, 2 (3), 2007.
While most acronyms are explained when first encountered, it was a long time before I worked out what ‘CSFs’ stood for. The limited index did not lead me to a definition: the first page to which I was directed had no mention at all, and elsewhere the term was not defined. It is, however, spelled out on the back of the dust jacket, which I did not read until after finishing the book!
Museum of London Archaeology Service: Requiem: the medieval monastic cemetery in Britain, by Roberta Gilchrist and Barney Sloane (2005, xvii + 273 pp, £29.95). Rev. by Lawrence Butler, The Antiquaries’ Journal, 86, 2006.
In such a well-illustrated and informative volume it is disappointing that the index is not entirely reliable and that some figure captions seem unhelpful.
Oxford University Press: John Betjeman: a bibliography, by William S. Peterson (2006, 542 pp, £100). Rev. by Elizabeth Johnson, Times Literary Supplement, 2 February 2007.
Recordings made, whether or not commercially available, are claimed to be noted, but the titles are not indexed and the names of other participants in the programmes only selectively so. I wasn’t able to find the television programme Betjeman Goes By Train, and the practice of not indexing individual programme titles could not enlighten me as to whether this was the title, not of a single film, but perhaps a collection of shorter broadcasts . . .
What a shame, then to have attached to this well-researched and scholarly work an index of such poor quality. It is full of incon sistencies, omissions and solecisms. Mary, Lady Wilson is listed as ‘Wilson, Lady Mary’, and Penelope, Lady Betjeman is listed as ‘Lady Penelope’. The daughter of the Earl of Birkenhead, Lady Juliet Smith, is demoted to ‘Smith, Juliet, Lady’, and there is an entry for a non-existent Lady Eleanor Smith pointing to the same entry in the text. The clergy fare little better; the late Archbishop of Canterbury is listed as ‘Runcie, Archbp Robert’ and Cosmo Gordon Lang as ‘Lang, Cosmo Gordon, Archbishop’. Thora Hird and Daphne Du Maurier are indexed without their titles of ‘Dame’ although Dame Judi Dench and Dame Peggy Ashcroft, also cited in the text without them, have their titles attached at random, like tails on a donkey, reading as ‘Dench, Dame Judi’ and ‘Ashcroft, Peggy, Dame’. The former village of Lydiard Tregoze appears in the text with both its modern and former spelling (respectively, with and without the final ‘e’), but the index entry has picked up the archaic form. In mitigation, one thing the indexer has done is to clarify the rather wayward entry for Ashby St Ledgers in the Radio section, ‘. . St Leodagarius’ Church, Ashby St Ledgers, Peterborough’. Peterborough? Nearly sixty miles away? The church is in the diocese of Peterborough, but located in the county of Northamptonshire, and is correctly cited as such in the index. Are these signs, in an American academic, of a sketchy acquaintance with English geography and titles of nobility? [But in a letter in the 23 February issue of the TLS, Robert Hanrott commented: ‘Am I the only person who looks on Elizabeth Johnson’s review . . . as petty and its over-concentration on minor points of title etiquette overdone? Maybe Mr Peterson overlooked some minor indexing points in his huge endeavour, but all the entries are perfectly serviceable and merit maybe a sentence of complaint, not a column. These complaints tell the reader more about the character of the reviewer than they do about the character of the bibliography. This sort of “criticism” should have been properly edited itself. Can we have a “Review of Reviewers”? Some cannot see the woods for the trees.’]
Oxford University Press: Mrs Duberly’s war (reprint of Fanny Duberly’s diary), ed. by Christine Kelly (2007, 416 pp, £16.99). Rev. by Allan Mallinson, The Times, 10 March 2007.
The index is inadequate, being a mere list of people mentioned in the text, and the price - given that the copyright is long expired - is exorbitant.
Oxford University Press: Oxford handbook of clinical diagnosis, by Huw Llewelyn et al (2006, 702 pp, £22.95). Rev. by Jonny Wilkinson, British Journal of Hospital Medicine, September 2007, 67 (9).
The index can be irritating . . . [But in what way? Details are needed.]
Pickering and Chatto: New Foundling Hospital for Wit, 1768-1773 (3 vols), ed. by Donald W Nichol (2006, 1,408 pp, £275). Rev. by Claude Rawson, Times Literary Supplement, 20 July 2007.
When information about date, authorship and occasion is supplied, it might turn up in one of several places other than the relevant point in the commentary: in the erratic biographical appendix, or a user-unfriendly ‘Author Index’, or occasionally in the headnote to the volume in which the work appears . . .
Politico’s: Orwell in Tribune, ed. by Paul Anderson (2006, 401 pp, £19.99). Rev. by Geoffrey Wheatcroft, The Spectator, 6 January 2007.
The index is useless . . .
Portobello: The vitamin murders: who killed healthy eating in Britain?, by James Fergusson (264 pp, £12.99). Rev. by Paul Levy, The Observer, 24 June 2007.
The execrable writing of the first chapter (no metaphor left unmixed, no cliché unperpetrated) improves as the narrative gets closer to the murders, but most of this maddeningly index-lacking (and unannotated) book consists of interesting but reader frustrating digressions - and you feel in the end that the title is a cheat.
Princeton University Press: Principles of animal locomotion, by R. McNeill Alexander (2006, 371 pp, £26.95). Rev. by David Pye, Biologist, 54(2), May 2007.
The only disappointment is the index which is much less helpful than it might be. For instance ‘Fish’ gives only ‘swimming 266’ despite detailed treatment in several appropriate parts of the book. ‘Penguins’ gets ‘247, 257’ but ignores the discussion on porpoising on pages 264-5 or the energy used in swimming on page 7.
Profile Books: The Economist style guide: the bestselling guide to English usage (2005, 250 pp, £16.99). Rev. by Barbara Frame, Australian Library Journal, 56(1), February 2007.
This is one of the best style guides I’ve seen. The Economist’s inhouse manual for its journalists, now in its ninth edition, is highly readable, and its usefulness will extend far beyond business writers. No author is given, and the text has obviously been put together over time, probably in an ad hoc way . . .
As well as the style guide proper, there is a fifteen-page section on American and British English for those who need to get it right on both sides of the Atlantic, and a Useful Reference section, over 80 pages long, with loads of factual information of the kind a jour nalist might need, including international currencies, the Beaufort scale, a list of the earth’s geological eras, the dates and locations of the Olympic Games, weights and measures, and so on. There is also an index of limited usefulness (and no help to me when, starting the paragraph before this one, I decided to check whether The Economist prescribed roman type or italics for the Latin expression ‘ad hoc’. I found the answer, but only after several minutes’ hunting).
Profile: The shock of the old: technology and global history since 1900, by David Edgerton (2006, 270 pp, £18). Rev. by John Cornwell, Sunday Times, 7 January 2007.
But strangely he ducks a sustained discussion of nuclear energy (mysteriously, the index indicates mention of the issue on a page vii - that doesn’t exist in the book).
Selene Edizioni: Uomini da remo: galee e galeotti del Mediterraneo in età moderna by Luca Lo Basso (2003, 515 pp, €15.50). Rev. by Niccolò Capponi, Renaissance Quarterly 58(3), Fall 2005.
The most glaring [flaw] is the volume itself, shoddily produced and edited. The inclusion of a two-page preface by Gino Benzoni has been done in disregard of the indexes, putting all page references out of place - something easily amended, had the publisher been a bit more careful.
Tempus: Yeavering: people, power and place, ed. by Paul Frodsham and Colm O’Brien (2005, 254 pp, £19.99). Rev. by Anna Ritchie, The Antiquaries’ Journal, 86, 2006.
My only grouse concerns the index, which is oddly inept: one can look up the Moray Firth, which has but a passing mention, but not staffolus, which has three pages of discussion. If you must search for Celtic cowboys, they are there, but you will fail to find kingship, despite its prominence as a theme in the book.
Timber Press: The dendrobiums, by Howard P. Wood (2006, 966 pp, $150). Rev. by Clair Russell Ossian, Orchids, February 2007.
In my opinion, this enormous book could have been organized differently, more efficiently, indexing could have been much better, and there are a host of little things reviewers of any book will find to complain about, but in the end, this is a most impressive achievement.
Weidenfeld & Nicolson: Tip & run: the untold tragedy of the Great War in Africa, by Edward Paice (2007, 488 pp, £25). Rev. in The Economist, 17 February 2007.
In 1917 a Zeppelin got as far as Khartoum before turning back apparently having been tricked by a bogus radio message sent by the British. Yet this astonishing story is crammed into four pages and is missing from the index.
Wiley & Sons: Cardiac care: an introduction for healthcare professionals, ed. by D. Barrett et al (2006, 228 pp, £24.99). Rev. by Karen Rawlings-Anderson, British Journal of Cardiac Nursing, 1 (12), December 2006.
Nor is there a glossary of terms used. For example the term ‘heart attack’ is commonly used by patients and those with little knowledge about cardiac care. While I accept this is not the correct terminology, it is likely to be a term a novice health professional might look up in the index, but it is not included.
John Wisden: Wisden anthology 1978-2006: cricket’s age of revolution, ed. by Stephen Moss (2006, 1,328 pp, £40). Rev. by Barney Ronay, The Guardian, 16 December 2006.
Also, the index could have been a bit more detailed, if only to reflect the richness of the detail.
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