How to Make an Index

by Henry B. Wheatley

When the index had become of some importance, and was recognised as a help to the inquirer, it could be printed. When published, it might be interleaved, so that additions might be made which could be sent to the office. Gradually the index would grow into a work of very considerable importance.

One of the chief objections to index catalogues of public libraries is that the same work is practically repeated by each library, while a general index would be useful to all. Surely some arrangement might be made by which the various libraries would contribute funds to the central office and receive the indexes, which would serve their purpose as well as those of all the other libraries!

Having said so much, it seems necessary to explain rather more fully what the general index should contain and what should be omitted. To explain it in a few words, it should be a sort of encyclopædia of references rather than of direct information; but it should contain more headings than any existing encyclopædia. Every one must have felt the want of some book which would give information or references on a large number of subjects that are constantly topics of ordinary conversation, but are consistently ignored in the ordinary books of reference. On the other hand, mere technical references should be omitted, because these details would overload the work, and because specialists have their own sources of information. It is the general information which every one is supposed to possess that is so difficult to obtain.

In the first instance the groundwork of the index should be laid down with care by an expert. All special bibliographies should be entered under their subjects, both those published separately and those included in other books. Various societies have published indexes. There are those among the publications of the Index Society and many others. The Bibliographical Society has published indexes to the German periodical Serapeum and to Dibdin's edition of Ames' and Herbert's Typographical Antiquities; but very few persons know of these books.

The authorities of the British Museum have given students an immense help by gathering separate indexes and bibliographies on various subjects into the dwarf bookcases in the Reading-room. Here are a large number of aids to knowledge of which the general reader would have known nothing if they had not so obligingly been brought under his notice. [27]

[ [27] The late Professor Justin Winsor gave a list of indexes in his useful Handbook for Readers (for the Boston Public Library); and I added a "Preliminary List of Indexes" to What is an Index? London, 1879. Other lists have also been published by the British Museum, etc.

A large number of books contain special information of importance on various subjects, the existence of which would never be guessed from the titles. Attempts at general indexes of special subjects have been published, such as F. S. Thomas's Historical Notes (1509-1714), and the main points of these should be included in the proposed General Index.

When a good groundwork has been made, the index could be printed; and doubtless, if this printed index was widely circulated, a large number of helpers would speedily be found. Many persons know of places where full information on some subject may be found, and would be glad to place their collections where they would be helpful to others.

There can surely be no doubt that a general inquiry office with such an ever-growing index and a library of printed indexes would be a boon not only to the student, but to the general public. Every day the great truth that keys to knowledge are more and more required is generally appreciated.

As a groundwork for such a general index, selection could be made from the books already mentioned; and from the index volumes of Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica (1824), which, with all its faults, is one of the most valuable helps to bibliography, and the subject index of James Darling's Cyclopædia Bibliographica (1854-1859), many useful references could be obtained. These two books are gradually getting out of date, but information may be obtained from their pages which is not easily to be obtained elsewhere.