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.

Boydell Press: The Franciscans in the Middle Ages, by Michael Robson (2006, £25). Rev. by Nicholas Vincent, The Tablet, 23 September 2006.

Robson’s command of the primary sources is considerable, and his text is packed full with interesting details. Unfortunately, only a small fraction of these can be recovered from an index that is inadequate, or traced from their abbreviated citation in footnotes through to their full listing in a bibliography, which is both incomplete and poorly organised. In any future edition, and one hopes in any future volumes in this series, both the index and the bibliographical apparatus should be drastically revised.

British Library: Worlds of print: diversity in the book trade, by John Hinks and Catherine Armstrong (2005, 240 pp, £25). Rev. by Diana Dixon, CILIP Update, 5(12), December 2006.

This book is a delight to read and should provide something of interest for all those interested in the history of the book trade. What a pity it did not merit a more detailed index. [Or rather, a pity that the British Library didn’t think it merited one.]

Butterworth-Heinemann: The National Trust manual of housekeeping: the care of collections in historic houses open to the public (2005, 941 pp, £49.99). Rev. by Joanne Robinson, Views (National Trust journal), Summer 2006.

My only criticism of the Manual is that the 12-page index does not do justice to the sheer quantity of useful information. A more detailed index would make it more useful as a quick reference source. Many houses are understaffed with teams valiantly trying to do as much as possible in a short space of time. Opportunities to pore over text books during the working day are rare and information needs to be easily accessible with a thorough index.

Cambridge University Press: A chronology of Jane Austen and her family, by Deirdre Le Faye (2006, 720 pp, £85). Rev. by Claire Harman, Times Literary Supplement, 18 & 25 August 2006.

I had difficulty with the index, however, which refers the reader to years rather than page numbers (obviously tedious when the year in question contains up to thirty pages of entries)….

Lippincott Williams & Wilkins: Hemostasis and thrombosis: basic principles and clinical practice (5th edn), ed. by Robert W. Colman et al. (2006, 1827 pp, $325). Rev. by Bruce Furie, N. Engl. J. Med. 355(17), 26 October 2006.

The information on chemical analyses, laboratory diagnosis, and genetics was fine, but I could not find information on current recommendations for management in the index. The information may be there, but I could not locate it…. I was surprised that in this computer-based era, when textbook sales are dwindling, that the publisher has not provided readers with digital access to references and text searching. Although many people still do not want to read an entire book on a computer screen, opportunities for searching, index linkage, and access to references, for example, have been missed. Had they been provided, the search for answers to my clinical questions might have been successful. [Or perhaps the book just needs a better index?]

Macmillan: The devil’s picnic: a tour of everything the governments of the world don’t want you to try, by Taras Grescoe (2006, 359 pp, £12.99). Rev. by Paul Levy, Times Literary Supplement, 18 & 25 August 2006.

His index substantiarum prohibitorum is strange, and has a feeling of having been chosen randomly.

Oxford University Press: The iconography of early Anglo-Saxon coinage: sixth to eighth centuries, by Anna Gannon (2003, x + 230 pp, £60). Rev. by James Graham-Campbell, Medieval Archaeology, XLIX, 2005.

The numerous footnotes are not consistently indexed, although they contain much information.

Oxford University Press: Writers, readers and reputations, by Philip Waller (2006, 1181 pp, £85). Rev. by A. N. Wilson, The Spectator, 17 June 2006.

One other cavil, and a more serious one. Oxford University Press should pay someone to make a much more detailed index. There are over 40 references to Thackeray, for example, some where he is mentioned in passing and others rich in anecdote, such as his wanting to have corn-sheaves carved by the front door of his house in Kensington (now the Israeli embassy) which he built from the profits of being editor of the Cornhill Magazine. (He barely lived to see the house completed.)

Oxford University Press (Australia): Qualitative research methods (2nd edn), by Pranee Liamputtong and Douglas Ezzy (2005, 340 pp, £28.99). Rev. by Hsiu-Feng Hsieh, Respiratory Care, 51(7), July 2006.

The index is of limited usefulness; it does not provide complete information on terms used in the book. For example, content analysis is discussed as an analytic strategy used in an unobtrusive method, but the reader would not know that if he or she were only to look at the index under ‘content analysis.’

Politicos: Orwell in Tribune: ‘As I please’ and other writings 1943–7, ed. by Paul Anderson (2006, 401 pp, £19.99). Rev. by Gordon Bowker, Observer, 29 October 2006.

However, the book also torpedoes several myths — that he was anti-Semitic (not by 1943 he wasn’t), that he rarely referred to Hitler and the Nazis (though his many references here go unmentioned in the index), and that he was sadistic (he opposed taking revenge on the Germans and loathed the execution of Nazis and their collaborators).

Potomac Books: The Star Wars enigma: behind the scenes of the cold war race for missile defense, by Nigel Hey (2006, 288 pp, $27.95). Rev. by Jeff Hecht, New Scientist, 6 November 2006.

It could have done with a better explanation of technical issues and a decent index.

SCM: A short course in Christian doctrine, by George Pattison (2005, 180 pp, £19.99). Rev. by Ken Bakewell, The Reader, 103(3), Autumn 2006.

The inadequate index contains one particularly strange entry – ‘Christ, Jesus’ – as though Christ were a surname!

Schott Musik International: Robert Schumann in Endenich (1854–1856), ed. by Bernard R. Appel (607 pp, €34.95). Rev. by John Worthen, Times Literary Supplement, 10 November 2006.

My only real complaint about this book is its lack of a full index. There is a Personenregister but a selective one (the entries on Brahms and Clara, for example, give page numbers for musical works but not for letters). […] Previous volumes of the Schumann Forschungen series (4, 5, 6, 8 and 10) had far better indexes.

I. B. Tauris: From Empire to Orient, by Geoffrey Nash (2005, 252 pp, £24.50). Rev. by Tim Mackintosh-Smith, Times Literary Supplement, 15 September 2006.

… and there are far too many mistakes, from Wilfred Thesiger’s being classed on the first page as a ‘nineteenth-century’ traveller (not that he would have disapproved) to Government House in Calcutta’s being described as ‘an Adam Smith creation’, to a wild goose chase masquerading as an index.

Woodfield Press: Print culture and intellectual life in Ireland, 1660-1941, ed. by Martin Fanning and Raymond Gillespie (2006, 267 pp, €45). Rev. by Antony Farrell, Irish Times, 22 July 2006.

… a sideswipe at Brian Friel’s play Translations is buried in a scholarly footnote, and unindexed.