Lack of indexes in works on information science

✍ Scribed by Kilgour, Frederick G.

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1993
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 80 KB
• Volume: 44
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0002-8231
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-4571(199307)44:6<364::aid-asi6>3.0.co;2-f

✦ Synopsis

During the early stages of a search for definitions of "information" in works on information science for use in another major project, it came to light that there might be a significant absence of indexes in such works. Immediately the question arose, "What is the percentage of recent books on information science that lack indexes?" This brief communication answers that question.

Books selected were listed under the Library of Congress Subject Heading "Information Science" and its subdivisions. They were in English, published between 1980 and 1991, and were listed in the combined online catalog of Duke University, North Carolina State University, and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In all, 144 books were searched for the major project. Once a book had been obtained the first procedure was to search the index for a definition of information. If a book had an index, that fact was recorded; similarly, if there was no index, that fact was also recorded. Twelve were self-indexed (dictionaries and encylopedias) and discarded from this study.

Half the books lacked indexes as Table 1 shows. Indexes were absent in a third of the monographs, in half of the compilation of reprints, and three-quarters of the congresses and compilations of previously unpublished papers, and, not surprisingly, in all four of the published dissertations.

This finding reveals an absurdity. Certainly information science ought to be heavily concerned with access to information, and to have half its books lacking in indexes, which have been the main tool for accessing published information since the 13th century (Rouse & Rouse, 1979) seems to be nothing short of the "shoemaker's-children" syndrome.