Alexander Johannesen wrote:
>
>> Whereas a real index shows everything that
>> is actually there in an alphabetic environment, like the
>> example I provided, with no restrictions on going up and
>> down from there.
>
>
> Real indeces? :) What are those? Back-of-book indeces? A-Z lists of
> something? An index these days is a fairly vague notion.
>
Think of it like the A-Z listing in a telephone directory.
It is fully visible, can be browsed up and down without limitation.
And then imagine you may click on any name to see the titles linked
to it.
A music catalog may offer the list of composers and all other persons
for browsing.
There may also be combined indexes, like Names plus titles of works
for browsing. You may want to look at this to see what I mean:
http://subito.biblio.etc.tu-bs.de/classix/page.php?urG=KWT&urA=24&urS=montev
Enter the names of other composers to see what's there.
OTOH, there is, as I said, very little demand for things like these.
Some people have scant notion what an index is, many don't know what to
make of it when they see one. A concept whose time has gone? If so,
drop it from OPAC requirements, we have enough complexity anyhow.
B. Eversberg
Received on Fri Jun 23 2006 - 08:33:01 EDT