The American Society for Indexing held its 2025 Virtual Conference, “Spring into Action,” on Friday, April 25, 2025, and Saturday, April 26, 2025. Sessions were held virtually on Zoom each day.
In the last session on Saturday, Leaping Literature: Strategies for Indexing Literary Criticism, presenter Devon Thomas explored the challenges and pleasures of indexing books about books. Literary studies texts can be complicated and often include elements of other subjects, such as biography and history that also need indexing.
Understanding the Genre
She said that indexers need to understand the genre, since each requires a different approach. She advised indexers to pay attention to movements and schools of criticism for inclusion as entries. She said also to watch for terms of art, focusing on the aboutness of the term vs. its mere presence.
Title Considerations
She said there is also a potential for many title entries, which can affect space and entry time. Decide if author glosses are needed, especially when the text is focused on a single author. Connect titles to authors with works entries or subentries and/or other arrangements.
People Considerations
There is also a potential for many name entries, which can affect space and entry time. Decide if scholars will be indexed and at what level. Index characters when necessary but be wary of indexing plot.
Style and Reading Experience
She finished by sharing that discursive and longwinded styles in the books to be indexed are not uncommon. Embedded indexing requires extensive forced sorting of titles and prepositions, as well as cross reference manipulation.
This concludes the series of blog postings on the ASI 2025 Virtual Conference. For more information about the services provided by the author of this blog, see the Stellar Searches LLC website, https://www.stellarsearches.com.