Re: Indexing Online Documentation

Subject: Re: Indexing Online Documentation
From: Lori Lathrop <76620 -dot- 456 -at- COMPUSERVE -dot- COM>
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 1995 05:10:39 EST

Karen Kay (INTERNET:karenk -at- NETCOM -dot- COM) says:

> I'm taking an *excellent* course at San Jose State on online
> documentation. I'm learning so much! Anyway, tonight we were talking
> about indexes for online help. I looked at the indexes for several
> programs today, and they uniformly sucked.

> Are professional indexers ever hired to index online help? And if not,
> why not, if they are hired to index the book?

Karen -- Brace yourself! You've touched one of my hot buttons! :-)
But wait ... although I could jump up on my little soapbox and give a
lengthy diatribe on the many shortcomings I've seen in online indexes
that were created by people who don't have the foggiest notion of how
to apply good indexing skills to online documentation, I won't do that.
(Aren't you glad?)

Instead, I'll restrain my urge to pontificate. (Bet you're *really*
glad now, eh?) I'll also restrain my urge to tell you all about my
indexing services and the indexing workshops I teach. I will, however,
quote from an editorial by Carolyn McGovern (President of the American
Society of Indexers) in the JAN/FEB issue of KeyWords; she says:

"... Increasing indexers' opportunities to learn and to
network are worthwhile objectives. ASI has been revitalized
by the new local groups and the new job categories of people
who are turning up at our meetings. No longer are we just
indexers, librarians, editors, and database producers. We
are also technical writers, product developers, data searchers,
"cybrarians," "retrieval engineers," and information
specialists of many kinds.

The immediacy of our need to broaden our outlook to reach out
to other information organizations, to get the word out that
our skills are vital to the world of information, *right now*,
hit me very dramatically during the Golden Gate Chapter's
midwinter conference, "Indexing in the Information Age,"
January 21.

At this conference, we learned or were reminded that textbooks
are disappearing from classrooms at all levels. Changing
teaching styles have brought a shift to teacher-gathered
materials from many sources, to more independent research,
to on-line sources. We heard that the skills of trained
indexers are often not being used in CD-ROM products, that
where the links used to navigate in these reference sources
are given any thought, they are being created by product
developers, who may know little about the background, needs,
or search habits of their consumers.

Yet this knowledge is our stock in trade, and we need to
publicize this fact. How can we do this? ....

... We must communicate to more people that indexers can
select keywords and create organizational structures that
will make any kind of information more accessible."

************************************************************************
Lori Lathrop ----------> INTERNET:76620 -dot- 456 -at- compuserve -dot- com
Lathrop Media Services, P.O. Box 808, Georgetown, CO 80444
(Author of _An Indexer's Guide to the Internet_, published by the
American Society of Indexers, P.O. Box 386, Port Aransas, TX 78383)
************************************************************************


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