As this is a non-fiction book, I'll not bother with the spoilers warning. I've long thought of book indexing as my post-post-retirement job. I admire great indexes and absolutely abhor books with crappy indexes. I didn't even know Indexer was a job. Assumed it was created by either the publishing company or some computer (how else to explain bad indexes?). But no, there are people who actually write these indexes. That was appealing to me, so over the years I've read a few books and many articles on book indexing.
So when an indexer I follow offered up his book on indexing as an advance reading copy, I jumped on it. I wasn't quite sure he'd want me as a beta reader; I've taken block A (of four) of the American Society for Indexing's professional certification course and I've read Nancy Mulvaney's Indexing Books and Do Mi Stauber's Facing the Text. That was enough for Mr. Ullstrom, so I got my pdf of his book.
Ullstrom's book is divided into nine chapters covering all aspects of book indexing. The book is aimed at both authors who have to write their own index (or find a professional to do it) as well as those of us interested in indexing as a career. He does a good job reminding us that the index serves the reader, and for some is the first entry point to the book.
Let's start at the beginning. What even is indexing? According to Ullstrom (and I agree), it "is about deconstructing a book into its components and reassembling all that information into an easily searchable format." And an index? "An index is a document created to help users access information." He gets in-depth on how indexes are structured: entries, arrays, main and sub-headings, locators, cross-references. What was new to me (or I did not remember from my previous readings) was supermain discussions. "Supermain discussions...are the key discussions of the book. Supermains flesh out the metatopic..." Metatopic I've heard before ("...what the book as a whole is about.") from Stauber's text. Another new term from Ullstrom is aboutness: "...recognizing what the book, at all levels of the hierarchy of information, is about."
The book ends with several pages of resources for authors and future indexers: books and article citations, journals and newsletters, and indexing societies. Not to mention a great index.
Aboutness, metatopic, supermains, all help the indexer to develop the structure of the index, "how all the entries and arrays fit together." This is what leads to a great index. One should be able to read the index and grasp the author's argument. Reading Ullstrom's book will help an author, or someone interested in becoming an indexer (moi!), or a new indexer create a great index. And we can all agree, or should all agree, that indexes are integral parts of the books we read. Without a good index, we are left with reading through the entire book or several chapters to find the discussion we're seeking.
I will be buying a dead-tree version of this book for my indexing/copyediting bookshelf.
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