Indexes Praised and 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.

Basic Books: Animal architects, by James R. Gould and Carol Grant Gould (2007, 323 pp, £15.99). Rev. by Donald Michie, Spectator, 19 May 2007.

The most annoying fault of Animal architects is its wholly inadequate index. Serious readers may even be driven to construct their own. But the charm and humour with which the authors write and their close attention to verified fact redeem the faults of one of the best popular science books of recent years. [Which an index could have made even better.]

Blackhall: Know your rights: a simple guide to social and civic entitlements in Ireland, by Andrew McCann (2007, 361 pp, €19.95). Rev. in Books Ireland, September 2007.

Chandos Publishing:  Building a successful archival programme: a practical approach, by Marisol Ramos and Alma C. Ortega ( 2006, 184 pp, £39.95). Rev. by Bob Pymm, Australian Library Journal, 56(2), May 2007.

The size of the book limits opportunities for detailed discussion but at the same time does mean that it is very accessible to busy professionals (although the index is a little sparse).

Continuum: A new history of jazz, by Alyn Shipton (2007, 784 pp, £19.99). Rev. by William Palmer, Literary Review, December 2007/January 2008.
The only major fault, especially for such a valuable work, is an index that is full of errors and omissions.

Dee: Selected letters, by Aldous Huxley, ed. by James Sexton (2007, 497 pp, $35.) Rev. by Jeremy Treglown, Times Literary Supplement, 18 January 2008.

The popular novelist and literary journalist Naomi Royde-Smith makes unheralded (and at first unindexed) appearances in letters from 1922 on and is herself among Huxley’s correspondents from 1926. Not until 1931, though, half-way through the book, does the editor suddenly vouchsafe to us who she was.

Facet Publishing: Ethics, accountability and recordkeeping in a dangerous world, by Richard J. Cox (2006, 298 pp, £44.95). Rev. by Gillian Oliver, Australian Library Journal, 56(2), May 2007.

The format of the book has resulted in some repetition. For instance, the Association of Records Managers and Administrators (ARMA) and the Society of American Archivists codes of ethics are discussed in two essays. Unfortunately, the index refers to only one of those discussions. The index includes some authors cited, but not all of them. It would have been useful to mention the criteria for inclusion.

Facet Publishing: Training library staff and volunteers to provide extraordinary library service, ed. by Julie Todaro and Mark L. Smith (2006, 168 pp, £39.95). Rev. by Diana Dixon, Library & Information Update, 7(1-2), January/February 2008.

Sadly, an inadequate index lets the publication down. Dealing with telephone queries is treated in some detail, yet there is no mention of this in the index and a number of other topics are also omitted.

Little Red Hen: Poems 1957-2006, by Sydney Bernard Smith (2007, 252 pp, €15). Rev. in Books Ireland, September 2007.

The index does not provide page numbers. [So is it really an index?]

Palgrave Macmillan: A directory of Shakespeare in performance 1970-2005, Vol 1: Great Britain, by John O’Connor and Katharine Goodland (2007, 1,760 pp, £125). Rev. by Heather Neill, Around the Globe (magazine of Shakespeare’s Globe), 13, Autumn 2007.

Despite the pleasures of dictionary-surfing and the undoubted usefulness of this volume in certain circumstance, there are definite shortcomings. The layout is strange, with a blank half page occurring sometimes between entries about the same play, but the Merchant section ending with three lines and the top of a page just above the first entry for The Merry Wives of Windsor. Too often an actor’s name appears incorrectly – Antony Sher and Desmond Barrit are mis-spelt – and there is a sprinkling of annoying typographical errors such as ‘siver’ for silver (813) and ‘marbe’ for marble (823). The Indexes are wrongly titled, with lists of reviewers appearing under Companies and vice versa. And how, one wonders, did Ed Stoppard, playing Lorenzo at Chichester on 2004 become transformed into Edition Stoppard? [Easy enough to guess – global search and replace!]

Much as I love to have a solid directory in book form, there is a good case here for transferring the lot to a website, correcting mistakes and providing links to other sources, such as Theatre Record and theatre websites.

Tauris: The triumph of military Zionism: nationalism and the origins of the Israeli Right, by Colin Shindler (2005, 272 pp, £39.50). Rev. by Geoffrey Wheatcroft, Times Literary Supplement, 22 February 2008.

I. B. Tauris has made a name for books which are nicely turned out as well as worth reading, but The Triumph of Military Zionism is a mess, clumsily designed, with an inadequate index, and some passages where the typesetting is so wayward that the reader has to be his own textual critic and infer the sense. A paperback putting right as much of this as possible would be no more than the book’s due.

University of Western Australia Press: Aboriginal health workers – primary health care at the margins, by Bill Genet with Sharon Bushby et al. (2006, 240 pp.) Rev. by Priscilla Robinson, Australia and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 31(3), 2007.