Posted by Michael Angeles, Lucent Technologies, to the SIGIA-L listserv on August 7, 2001

BOOKS & JOURNALS

Explorations in Indexing & Abstracting: Pointing, Virtue & Power. Brian O'Connor

Draws on intellectual resources from information theory to MTV to discuss challenges to the indexing and abstracting field posed by the information and technology explosion, and presents alternatives for abstracting and indexing information so that users can actually find it. Looks at the shortcomings of traditional systems, and uses exercises and case studies to demonstrate the elements of a patron- specific system. Comment: This is a short, but excellent book discussing the intellectual work of representing knowledge, the core activity in indexing for information retrieval.

 

Guidelines for Indexes and Related Information Retrieval Devices (NISO TR-02-1997). James D. Anderson

This new NISO Technical Report provides expert guidance on designing indexes for every kind of document. Coverage includes automatic indexing and indexing based on intellectual analysis and the use of controlled vocabularies. A comprehensive glossary of indexing terms is provided and recommended introductory text for print and back-of-the-book indexes, database indexes, computer produced indexes, and electronic search indexes are given. Comment: The PDF is available for download. Jim is also working on a book at present on the topic of knowledge representation. I used a draft of his forthcoming book to prepare a paper on indexing art images. The NISO report was a precursor and the JASIS article below were precursors to the forthcoming book.

Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Vol. 45 Number 8 1994.

Special issue on indexing. Also search through JASIS for indexing articles in the journal and in conference proceedings if you have access on the ASIS site. 

Most articles by Brian O'Connor, Jim Anderson, James Turner and Dagobert Soergel are relevant. Also, a great selection of books available from NISO  (search for "indexing").

WHITE PAPERS
NewsEdge white paper: Taxonomies: The Value of Organized Business Knowledge
CISCO white paper: Building a Web Vocabulary
ACIA white paper: Extracting Value from Automated Classification Tools

MONTAGUE INSTITUTE SOURCES
Managing taxonomies strategically

Creating and Using Business Taxonomies course

Also, look under "taxonomy" and "taxonomies" on the Montague Institute A - Z Index page.