Biography indexing: not
a subject specialism
I maintain that biography is not a special subject for indexing.
I will substantiate this assertion by defining what special subjects
are.
Special subjects consist of bodies of lore - that's L O R E -
of academic disciplines, established facts. They are provided with
standardised terminology and formalized structure for their texts.
Biographies involve none of these. Biographies are just books
about people, the lives they lead, their various activities and
relationships, told in an author's own way. They are absolutely
non-standardised.
The differences between the needs of readers of scientific and
of literary texts - which I take to mean between academic disciplines,
and the humanities - were outlined by Dr Edwin Holmstrom, in The
Indexer in 1965.[1] He wrote:
"What makes it necessary for scientists to read books is ...
the possibility of finding data, bits of knowledge, in those books
... a scientist reading a scientific book ... regards it rather
as a kind of quarry from which he may be able to extract useful
raw material ... this is quite a different motive from the one that
animates the reader of a literary work, for instance a biography.
He reads ... because he is interested in the theme of the book as
a whole. ... This difference in outlook and purpose ought to be
reflected in differences between the types of indexing proper to
`literary' and `scientific' works."
Indeed it ought, and it is these differences that constitute the
particular problems of indexing biographies. I will outline five
of them.
First, let us consider terms.
Eric Coates, who was editor of the British Technology Index,
recognized in 1966 that scientific literature:[2]
"Contains a greater number of concepts in toto and a far
higher proportion of precisely defined concepts than does the literature
of the humanities ... from the point of view of the battle between
words and meanings, the scientific indexer gets off relatively lightly."
Quite. "Precisely defined concepts" can be matched to
terms in the thesauri of the subject discipline. Computers can be
programmed to recognize them and reassemble them in the index. Indexers
of soft texts, as I chose to call narrative, humanity-based, non-specialist
subject texts, select their entries by determining their degree
of significance, not by matching them to a prescribed formula. The
indexer of soft texts -- humanities, biographies -- is often dealing
instead with personal relationships and emotions, and has to devise
terms in which to express them that are unbiased, accurate, and
likely to be sought by the reader. As Douglas Matthews puts it,
he is `in a sense, an interpreter, not just a reporter of the text'.
Matthews himself gives a splendid example of such interpretative
indexing, in his index to Laurence Olivier's autobiography, Confessions
of an actor. This book includes Olivier's account of how he
met Vivien Leigh, while he was still married to his first wife,
Jill Esmond. The story runs through these selected lines occurring
on pages 107-8:
"`I first set eyes upon the possessor of this wondrous unimagined
beauty on the stage of the Ambassadors Theatre ... She possessed
beautiful poise ... and ... an attraction of the most perturbing
nature I had ever encountered ... she popped into my dressing-room
and gave me a soft little kiss ... I soon began to feel sorry for
Jill, and of course guilt ... Two years of furtive life, lying life
... we could not keep from touching each other, making love almost
within Jill's vision.'"
No difficulty in deciding what entries to make in the index for
Vivien Leigh for those two pages. But what of Jill Esmond? Those
are the only references there to her; she does not appear at all
in these pages. But her entry in the index cannot omit them; they
impinge so greatly on her.
The penultimate subheading in the entry that Douglas contrived
for Esmond, Jill, is
- "supplanted by Vivien Leigh"
That term does not appear in Oliver's writing. It derives purely
from Douglas Matthew's analysis and interpretation of the text.
The second particular problem for indexing soft texts is the lack
of a firm structural format; determing when to end a reference in
a biography. Dry text books, manuals and instruction books, are
frequently ready provided with paragraph headings, that not only
serve as the fittest headings for the index, but even indicate where
that heading ceases to apply -- at the next paragraph heading. Indexers
of soft texts must work out the point of closure for each heading,
when a character has left the scene of action, or a concept is no
longer relevant.
Third problem -- length. Esmond de Beer wrote in 1956:[3]
"What generally differentiates ... scholarly editions of
extensive literary or historical texts from the indexes of shorter
and more everyday books is the far more frequent presence in them
of long entries ... that bring together a large number of defined
references under a single general heading."
These present the indexer of soft texts with the problem of sustained
continuity, the constant development of characters and themes. Much
subdivision and specification will become necessary. The compilation
of such subheadings, G.V. Carey wrote, "calls for the indexer's
highest skill of all".
To illustrate this highest skill, and also the subjective nature
of such compilation, I will give you two different entries for the
same narrative thread in one biography: that of Samuel PEPYS. This,
recall, is told in the first person; the indexer is interpreting
Pepys's own version of events for third parties. I will not read
the text this time; the indexes make all clear.
In the index to H. B. Wheatley's 9-volume edition of Pepys diary,
of 1914, we find:
Willet (Deb), Mrs. Pepys's new girl, arrives; taken to Brampton;
Mrs Pepys is jealous of her; Pepys kisses her; combs Pepys's hair;
her birthplace at Bristol; Mrs. Pepys catches Samuel embracing her;
Pepys discharges her, and advises her never to see him again; her
aunt.
Then, {alluded to} [ten lines of page numbers]
70 years later, the Wheatley award for 1983 went to Robert Latham
for his index to his 11-volume edition of the diary. He gave `WILLET,
Deb, companion to EP' (Elizabeth Pepys) a fuller, franker treatment
divided into 4 paragraphs -APPEARANCE: AS EP'S COMPANION: P'S AFFAIR
WITH: and SOCIAL.
under P'S AFFAIR WITH in Latham's index come -
P pleased with; EP jealous; P kisses; caresses; discovered by EP;
her rage and P's guilt; P fears she must leave; is prevented from
seeing; her confession; and dismissal; P searches for; EP threatens
to slit her nose; P never to see again; ... sees in street; EP makes
jealous scenes; threatens him with hot tongs; he meets by chance;
... winks at P in street; moves to Greenwich ...
Those are two quite different index entries for exactly the same
text. But we cannot suggest that either is wrong: the first is endorsed
by `the father of indexing', Wheatley himself; the second won the
award bestowed in Wheatley's name! The devising of subheadings for
biographies is a subjective, not standardised, matter.
Fourthly, there is the arrangement of these long sequences of subheadings.
Computers can arrange them for indexers in alphabetical order or
by page number. Neither is appropriate for indexes to biographies,
where subheadings must be arranged chronologically or in some logical,
ad hoc system, as in Latham's index to Pepys. A. S. Byatt writes,
"The biographer, Jenny Uglow, speaks with pleasure of good
chronological guides to lives, to be found within indexes, and the
sheer unuseful irritation produced by rendering these subentries
in alphabetical form -- beginning with `Aunt Amy's visit' not because
it came early, but because it begins with A".[4] That is what
relying on a computer to arrange subheadings in a biography will
do for you. For the arrangement of their subheadings, indexers of
biographies are denied this automatic aid to indexing.
And of course, for biographies, there is the problem of many minor
mentions. Minor characters, relations or long-term friends or colleagues
of the main character, may appear recurrently in the book, merely
mentioned as constantly there in the background. The indexer must
choose between omitting all these, giving them a false impression
of significance by according them subheadings, or letting them honestly
appear as an unqualified list of minor mentions - and be open to
censure by index judges.
There has been much dispute on Index-L, the indexers' email discussion
group, as to whether indexes are `compiled' or `written', as Nancy
Mulvany asserts. I would say there is no doubt: indexes to dry texts,
text books, special subjects, are compiled; indexes to soft texts,
biographies, are written.
Finally, let me quote Richard Abel, `Measuring the value of books'
in LOGOS:[5]
"Biographies and autobiographies, when composed, published
and sold in keeping with the traditional canons of sound judgement,
have been, and remain, among the crown jewels of the book trade."
And, despite these five most particular problems, they are great
fun to index.
References
1. Holmstrom, J. Edwin. The indexing of scientific books. The
Indexer 4 (4) Autumn 1965, 123-131.
2. Coates, E. J. Scientific and technical indexing. The Indexer
5 (1) Spring 1966, 27-34.
3. E. S. de Beer, `The larger index', The Journal of Documentation,
March 1956, page 1.
4. A. S. Byatt. Foreword to Hazel K. Bell, Indexers and indexes
in fact and fiction, British Library/University of Toronto Press,
2001
5. Richard Abel, `Measuring the value of books'. LOGOS 1,
1993, 36-44
by Hazel K. Bell, in Managing Information Vol. 8 No. 9 November,
pp 64-5