INDEXING
Why not use a computer?
A human indexer has the capacity to analyse the content and context of the text. An automated computer indexing program can only produce a list of words and phrases occurring in the text (a concordance).
A human indexer can
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Make an intelligent analysis of a text, disinguishing between significant and important references of use to readers, and passing or irrelevant mentions; and selecting appropriate keywords that users are likely to search under.
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Recognize relationships with other terms, by providing appropriate cross references that will lead users to other topics or terms that might be of interest eg. literacy see also reading.
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Provide access to terms for users who search under synonyms by providing cross references eg. pupils see students.
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Distinguish between homographs (words that look the same but have different meanings) eg. records (best performances) records (audio recordings) .
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Split long strings of page numbers into useful groups under subheadings
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Consolidate a number of similar word variations (challenge/challenges/challenged/challenging/testing) into a single entry point for the user.
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Analyse graphical and visual items and provide access to the ideas and images represented
A computer program cannot produce such a refined and complex product. Generally an automatically produced index will not be very user-friendly.
Computer full-text searching also has many of these drawbacks, and cannot replace the usefulness of an index, although text searching which incorporates an index has value.