Introduction

A back-of-the-book index (or just book index) is a collection of entries - often alphabetically arranged - which are made in order to allow users to locate information in a given book (or related document).

Perhaps the most advanced investigation of problems related to book indexes is made in the development of topic maps, which started as a way of representing the knowledge structures inherent in traditional back-of-the-book indexes.

Indexing software

Commercial software packets are available for book indexing. See: http://www.asindexing.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3319

Book indexing as a profession

In the United States, according to tradition, the index for a non-fiction book is the responsibility of the author, but most authors don't actually do it. Most indexing is done by freelancers hired by authors, publishers or an independent business which manages the production of a book. See further here: http://www.asindexing.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3304

American Society for Indexing

The American Society for Indexing, Inc. (ASI) is a national association founded in 1968 to promote excellence in indexing and increase awareness of the value of well-designed indexes. ASI serves indexers, librarians, abstractors, editors, publishers, database producers, data searchers, product developers, technical writers, academic professionals, researchers and readers, and others concerned with indexing. It is the only professional organization in the United States devoted solely to the advancement of indexing, abstracting and related methods of information retrieval. Homepage: http://www.asindexing.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=1

Texts about the indexing of specialized books include: History (Towery, 1998), law books (Kendrick & Zafran, 2001), medicine (Wyman, 1999), psychology (Hornyak, 2002), among others.

See also

• Concordance (publishing)
  Concordance (publishing)
  A concordance is an alphabetical list of the principal words used in a book or body of work, with their immediate contexts. Because of the time and difficulty and expense involved in creating a concordance in the pre-computer era, only works of special importance, such as the Vedas, Bible, Qur'an...
  
  
• Index (publishing)
  Index (publishing)
  An index is a list of words or phrases and associated pointers to where useful material relating to that heading can be found in a document...
  
  
• Indexing and abstracting service
  Indexing and abstracting service
  An abstracting service is a service that provides abstracts of publications, often on a subject or group of related subjects, usually on a subscription basis. An indexing service is a service that assign descriptors and other kinds of access points to documents...
  
  
• Subject (documents)
  Subject (documents)
  In library and information science documents are classified and searched by subject - as well as by other attributes such as author, genre and document type. This makes "subject" a fundamental term in this field. Library and information specialists assign subject labels to documents to make them...
  
  
• Subject indexing
  Subject indexing
  Subject indexing is the act of describing or classifying a document by index terms or other symbols in order to indicate what the document is about, to summarize its content or to increase its findability. In other words, it is about identifying and describing the subject of documents...