Indexing/Searching

Abstract

Indexing is one of the skills that has long been associated with editing. Indeed, in the past, certain editors almost made it their raison d'être: Esmond de Beer spent three whole years compiling the index to The Diary of John Evelyn, which occupies nearly the whole of volume 6 of his edition of that work, and which illustrates some of the intellectual functions that a full and carefully organised index can serve.1 In a case like this, it could be argued that de Beer lays out the entire structure of Evelyn's life and milieu, and to a more limited extent other indexers may feel that they have achieved something similar. This therefore raises issues as to how an index may illustrate deep structures in an edited text of the kind which hypertext might aspire to reveal, and we will return to the connection between indexing and electronic media later in this chapter. It also illustrates — contrary to what some might presume — that an index has a role going beyond the functions of a mere word search, though here again the mutual relationship between these phenomena requires elucidation.KeywordsResource Description FrameworkWord SearchUniform Resource IdentifierElectronic EditionEarly Modern PeriodThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.