Indexing a Handbook of Instruction

ook or volume of a periodical. It is not intended to supply any help in the compilation of a catalogue of books, for although the arts of the cataloguer and the indexer have much in common and overlap in places, some of the advice which is to be found in certain of the few manuals on indexing may be said to suffer from its derivation from the methods of the cataloguer of books. Nor does this text-book aspire to instruct those having to compile the great works in indexing, only a few of which are called for in a generation; indexes like that to the Encyclopedia Britannica, which demand the highest skill and experience of the professional indexer. Though its aim is a less ambitious one, the occasions for the elementaryguidance-which it endeavours to offer are, on the other hand, of everyday occurrence. Indexing is work which, in correspondence with the ceaseless flow of publications, has to be done in ever increasing quantity by authors (of their own books) ; by those on publishers' staffs, in the editorial offices of periodicals, in Government departments, in commercial, technical and scientific organisations (of which a great number have come into existence through the circumstances of the war of 1914-18), as well as by those who make it a means of livelihood. As every user of books has reason to know, much indexing is very well done ; much, on the other hand, very ill, not, for the most part, from lack of diligence or clerical correctness, but chiefly from ...