types of indexes

Prepared and discussed by:Agulto, Ernani A.

IV-15 BLIS

INDEXESCan be categorized many ways;By arrangement or by searching

structure or by specific subject fields or by purpose.

Can be a mix of different types of indexes.e.g. alphabetical and author.

FORMS of INDEXBy arrangement,

(E.g. alphabetical, classified…)By the types of materials index,

(E.g. book, periodical, newspaper index…)

By physical form.(E.g. card, microform, computerized index)

ALPHABETICAL INDEXESIs the most common method.More convenient and follows

familiar order.Based on orderly principle of letters

of the alphabet.All entries are in one alphabetical

order, including subject terms, author names and place names.

ALPHABETICAL INDEXESMAJOR DRAWBACKS: problems of

synonym and scattering of entries. Scattering- Subjects are not drawn together under generic termE.g. When looking for the information on janitor fish, do we look for janitor fish or fish?

AUTHOR INDEXESNot the most common type of indexes,

but not a rarity.Are those whose entry points are

people, organizations, corporate authors, etc…

Users are guided to titles of documents by the way of authors.

Authors can also be used as an indirect subject approach.

AUTHOR INDEXESAuthors are strong indicators of

subject content (Cleveland, 1976)e.g. Freud, Sigmund- Psychology or psychoanalysis.

BOOK INDEXESMost people (reading public) think of.Are lists of words, generally

alphabetical, at the back of the book, giving the page location of the subject or name associated with each word.

Pinpoints the information to the user.ISSUE: not every book (e.g reference

book) has a quality index, if not, none at all.

CITATION INDEXESConsists of a list of articles, with a sublist

under each article of subsequently published papers that cite the articles.

Shows who cited the paper.This kind of index implies that a cited

paper has an internal subject relationship with the papers that cited it, and use this relationship to cluster related documents– citations reflect document content.

CITATION INDEXESPRIMARY ADVANTAGE: leads the

user to the latest articles.

CLASSIFIED INDEXEShas its contents arranged systematically

by classes or subject headings.Have an important role to play (especially

in scientific indexing, e.g. biology).But general indexes that are classified

mystify the general users, they do not understand how they are constructed.

Indexes SHOULD BE user-oriented.

COORDINATE INDEXESallow terms to be combined or

coordinated.The idea of punching or notching a

card and then using a mechanical device, such as long needles, to drop out cards containing the combination of index terms of interest.

The basis of modern retrieval systems, world wide web search tools.

COORDINATE INDEXESIs really a process; coordinating

produces an index.e.g. individual index terms Pecan and Trees are combined, we have a new class of things: Pecan trees.

CUMULATIVE INDEXES is a combination or merging of a set of

indexes over time.Indexes for established works can often

cover many decades.Generally, apply to journals and to

large, important works and are published as separate volumes.

Are complex and usually done by teams of indexers.

FACETED INDEXESFacet, by definition, means one side of

something that has many sides.In a faceted indexing system, any

subject is not a single unit but has many aspects;

A facet index attempts to discover all the individual aspects of a subject and then synthesis them in a way that best describes the subject under discussion.

FACETED INDEXESA faceted scheme is a type of synthetic classification,

Often called an analytic-synthetic system.

PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS: an author looks at a subject in a different way or brings out new ideas or a new discovery.

FACETED INDEXESWith a faceted system, we put together

the class most closely representing the informational concepts in the new document.