I picked up the coolest needlework book ever at a used book store this weekend. It’s got a dizzying array of different techniques, and I’m going nuts trying to restrain myself from dumping all my works-in-progress to start a sampler.
The big problem is that the book has neither a table of contents nor an index! The different crafts are intermixed–one page may have some crochet techniques, an introduction to tatting, and an embroidery stitch or two–and there are illustrations sprinkled throughout that sometimes relate to the stuff on the page, and sometimes do not.
I still hope to get years of good use out of this book, but it’s obvious that I’m going to have to make some kind of index or I’m going to end up tearing my hair out. So, the question is, what’s the best way to go about it? Presumably there are people who do this for a living, so there must be some good system for doing it.
My thoughts so far: A spreadsheet would probably work, with one column for page numbers, one for the topic (e.g. “Increasing” or “Satin stitch”), one for the category (e.g. “Knitting”, “Embroidery”), one for the type of reference (e.g. “directions,” “illustration” ). That way I could generate varoius useful listings.
The drawback is that I don’t want to have to be sitting at the computer while I work on it. I thought maybe I could try index cards (imagine that!) listing each topic and the relevant page numbers. Problem is, that’s pretty bulky, and prone to random reorganizations, so I’d probably end up entering it all into the computer anyway.
Any pointers from Those In the Know would be much appreciated.
What pops into my head is to use a word processor, put the book in your lap, type the stuff in, then use Find to find all “knitting”, etc., and Cut and Paste to move stuff around.
And there’s this, under “book indexing software”. How much money and psychic energy did you want to invest in this?
I’m actually looking forward to looking through the book in exhaustive detail, so I’m not too worried about the amount of time I have to spend. I debated about spending $12 for the book, and thought it turned out to be money well spent, I’m not going to throw bad money after good. (Is that the right phrase?)
All in all, I think the majority of the work will be done by hand, by hook or by crook.
I actually did an index for a book I wrote, and yes, it was on index cards. You can spread everything out on a nice big flat surface, and it’s pretty easy to see what you’ve done so far.
You can also change your mind very easily about how you sort your headings and sub-headings and so on.
Putting it onto a computer later is a very good idea. Yes, it’s extra work but it will go much faster, and doesn’t have to be done all at once.
My wife is an editor and indexer, and she does almost everything in QuarkXpress. It’s very easy to use, but isn’t cheap, unfortunately. Still, if you want a professional-looking job, it’s your best bet.
I co-wrote a dictionary of idioms, and then co-wrote the key-word index… it was hard work!
I’m not sure our method would work in your case, Pod… we sat at two seperate computers, with the dictionary itself as a shared network file… one person had the dictionary open, and one had the key-word index open (actually 26 different files, one for each letter of the alphabet… we consolidated them after we were finished.).
Starting at page one of the dictionary, the person with it open would call out an idiom, the other person would then ad the key words to a master list of words (mostly nouns, verbs, and unique words) in the key-word index. For example, if the next idiom was kill time, the one with the index open would first open K and find the word kill (if not there, they would create the word in alphabetical order in the word list), add *kill time, pg. __ *(page numbers were added later, thankfully by the publisher!); then open T find the word time, and add kill time, etc.
Rinse and repeat many thousands of times, and a couple of weeks later we had our index! It sucked to do… BIG time!
There MUST be an easier way, but we couldn’t think of any…
In a former life as a professional editor, I created many an index using the indexing feature of Microsoft Word. I also have used the classic index card-based manual method. I thnk the latter would be easier for you.
Prior to tackling either unfriendly approach I have two ideas:
Since you purchased the book used, have you checked to see if a later edition has been published that contains an index? This is pretty common in the book trade. The cost would be worth it considering your time and labor.
Have you contacted the author to inquire if she or he has done this already? If you have an indexing requirement, I bet others have too. Most authors can be contacted courtesy of the publisher. An internet search might be fruitful also.
In a former life as a professional editor, I created many an index using the indexing feature of Microsoft Word. I also have used the classic index card-based manual method. I thnk the latter would be easier for you.
Prior to tackling either unfriendly approach I have two ideas:
Since you purchased the book used, have you checked to see if a later edition has been published that contains an index? This is pretty common in the book trade. The cost would be worth it considering your time and labor.
Have you contacted the author to inquire if she or he has done this already? If you have an indexing requirement, I bet others have too. Most authors can be contacted courtesy of the publisher. An internet search might be fruitful also.
In a former life as a professional editor, I created many an index using the indexing feature of Microsoft Word. I also have used the classic index card-based manual method. I thnk the latter would be easier for you.
Prior to tackling either unfriendly approach I have two ideas:
Since you purchased the book used, have you checked to see if a later edition has been published that contains an index? This is pretty common in the book trade. The cost would be worth it considering your time and labor.
Have you contacted the author to inquire if she or he has done this already? If you have an indexing requirement, I bet others have too. Most authors can be contacted courtesy of the publisher. An internet search might be fruitful also.
Professional indexer checking in. As you do not have the work in question in an electronic format, I think index cards would actually be your best option. There is professional indexing software available that could also do the job, but it would cost you several hundred dollars, which somehow I suspect is not really an option you are going to consider.
Every time you come across a term or concept you want to index, write the word(s) on one index card (you’re going to use one index card per index entry) and the page number(s) in one of the top corners. As you add index entries, alphabetize as you go.
If you want to do subentries, write them as, for example, “needlepoint: cross stitching”. In the final index, this will look like:
needlepoint
cross stitching
(Um, on preview I see this didn’t come out right. Please imagine that “cross stitching” is indented a few spaces.)
So you might have a card saying “needlepoint” and then ten successive cards each saying “needlepoint: crewelwork” or “needlepoint: crocheting” or whatever. (I know nothing about needlework so these are probably bad examples.)
If you want to create a See or See also reference, just write your See reference in the top corner where you would normally put the page number.
When you’re finished, I would transcribe the index into a text-editing program just for ease of use, and print it out and tuck it into the back of the book.
