1. Common-sense.
2. Insight into the meaning of the author.
3. Power of analysis.
4. Common feeling with the consulter and insight into his mind, so that the indexer may put the references he has drawn from the book under headings where they are most likely to be sought.
5. General knowledge, with the power of overcoming difficulties.
The ignorant man cannot make a good index. The indexer will find that his miscellaneous knowledge is sure to come in useful, and that which he might doubt would ever be used by him will be found to be helpful when least expected. It may seem absurd to make out that the good indexer should be a sort of Admirable Crichton. There can be no doubt, however, that he requires a certain amount of knowledge; and the good cataloguer and indexer, without knowing everything, will be found to possess a keen sense of knowledge.
As I owe all my interest in bibliography and indexing to him, I may perhaps be allowed to introduce the name of my elder brother, the late Mr. B. R. Wheatley, a Vice-President of the Library Association, as that of a good indexer. He devoted his best efforts to the advancement of bibliography. When fresh from school he commenced his career by making the catalogue of one of the parts of the great Heber Catalogue. He planned and made one of the earliest of indexes to a library catalogue—that of the Athenæum Club. He made one of the best of indexes to the transactions of a society in that of the Statistical Society, which he followed by indexes of the Transactions of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, Clinical, and other societies. He also made an admirable index to Tooke's History of Prices—a work of great labour, which met with the high approval of the authors, Thomas Tooke and William Newmarch.
