Indexing Multi-Author Works

Indexing multi-author works can be a real challenge. Vocabulary control, adjusting to different writing styles, and structural decisions are all concerns.

The most important thing when working on a multi-author work, whether a book of essays or a collection of previously published articles, is to make sure you have a single decision maker. This can be the editor of the volume, or your contact at the press; whomever you’re working with, make sure only one person is the final authority. You don’t want to add different answers to your questions to the already-complicated mix!

Vocabulary control

Simply put, use the same words for the same concepts every single time. It would be unusual — and stifling — for a group of authors to sit down and hash out a controlled vocabulary before they wrote their chapters. It’s also silly. Often, chapters or essays have already been written and published in other forms; in scholarly journals or at conferences. That’s the job of the indexer.

The easiest way to decide is by majority rule. I don’t mean poll the authors; just search the PDF for each version of a term (adolescents vs. teenagers vs. young adults, for example), and the one with the most occurrences wins. Or, you can choose the one that seems more precise. Are the children only between the ages of 13-19? Or does the book include 11 and 12-year-olds? Or only late teens? Whatever you choose, make sure to cross reference thoroughly from every version that appears in the book.

Writing styles

This is more of a time issue for the indexer. Just as you figure out how an author uses transitions and text headings, and you know what to expect, it’s time to move on to someone else. Perhaps one essayist puts the main idea at the beginning of each paragraph, but another puts it at the end. Some use fun, whimsical text headings, while others use descriptive ones that make for perfect index entries. Still another doesn’t use them at all!

This can make for slow(er) going for the indexer. I often find it takes me 30-40 pages to get a real feel for how the text is structured and where to look if I’m stuck. Working on a multi-author book means I don’t have that luxury. On the other hand, many of the articles or essays in a multi-author work will follow a conventional academic journal structure, so will not differ too wildly.

Index structure

This goes hand-in-hand with the book’s structure. I’ve done some books that are broken into three parts; to continue the imaginary example on adolescent developmental psychology, part one could include studies on the impact on children of family, part two of schools, and part three of friendships. That makes for a visible structure, where family, schools, and friendships will be the three big main headings.

Other books, however, might just follow a chronological structure. This is common in literary surveys and history. At that point, it’s on the indexer to pick out the themes as they pop up, and they may or may not pop up in each chapter. This is also the case in a single-author monograph, but the indexer has the luxury of a fairly consistent vocabulary (usually), which makes these easier to spot.

Sometimes, I’ll draw a simple graph of the book in order to get my bearings. On the vertical (X) axis, I plot the themes of each chapter. On the horizontal (Y) axis, I plot the through-threads of the book. It’s certainly not a mathematically sound method, but it does help me visualize how the book is put together.

Finally, don’t let these challenges keep you from taking an edited collection. Some of my very favorite indexing projects have been multi-author works, and the challenges themselves can be fun if you have the time to appreciate them.