See also by the same author: Classes of Information in Cyberspace
In addition to being a tool for reading and research, the index is the major interface between a reader (user) and an information product. The marketability of a work will be enhanced or diminished by its index. Once this principle is understood, the technical strategy for constructing an index flows readily from it. This is true whether one is writing an index, developing a software product designed to classify information, or designing a more open-ended set of references. Hypertext references are (if well constructed) a form of indexing.
According to the classical marketing paradigm, the scarcity of a product determines its value. The key to marketing a non-fiction work is to feature the scarce information it contains.
Non-fiction works are information products. Information leaps out at us from everywhere. Information is not a scarce commodity, but a surplus commodity. Yet the essential ingredient of a marketable product is scarcity.
Translating this into the field of non-fiction publishing, or more generally to the creation any complex information product, the potential reader or user will select a product when they perceive it to contain scarce information: access to a particular set of information of special (individual) interest.
To facilitate this information selection process, no better tool exists than a good index. Using the index, the reader (user) can quickly find in the work the particular information they seek, differentiated from the general surplus of information. The work is then understood through its index as a scarce information resource and a valuable product.
Carrying this idea further, we now have a basis upon which to define a good and a bad index. Using the vocabulary of the information industry, a good index is user-friendly. It anticipates the potential consumers of a given information product, these users' problems, and the kinds of information these users will consider valuable. The index features that information (by pointing toward it, as will be explained below) so that it can be readily be found. A good index is the interface by which a quick, vital and intense encounter can occur between an information product and its potential user.
A bad index, on the other hand, hides valuable information. The error is not merely of omission, it is of commission. Given time and other constraints, the potential reader or user increasingly "judges a book" not only by its cover but even more often by its index. Not finding their subject of interest in the index, the user assumes that the book or other product does not address nor contain this information, though a thorough reading might reveal the information is there. In this case the index has obstructed the users' access to that information, resulting in deselection of the product.
This issue of hidden information is compounded by the fact that often the concepts and terms sought by the potential user, may not be found in the text of a non-fiction work or other information product, even though they are addressed in the work. For example, let's look at the following well known passage from...
(The above is excerpted from the revised 1996 article, The User Friendly Index. Originally presented before the Textbook Author's Association of America (1989), the article appeared in Key Words, the publication of the American Society of Indexers in 1990, and was cited by the British Indexer as an instructive reference on the indexing process for authors and indexers. The article has been widely quoted in recent reference works on indexing, hypertext and information classification. Those wishing to obtain a copy from the author can receive it as an electronic attachment in Word 6, or as a printed copy.)
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