[Sigia-l] Web site A-Z indexes

[Rudorf, Carl]

Impractical? I suppose you have to consider the business value of
information accessibility. I work at a Fortune 50 company with +65k
employees. Among my responsibilities is maintaining a repository of
technical documents and developer code for which I created an A-Z index.
This slice of the intranet has high visibility and use. I've never heard
anything but positive remarks from site readers, which makes this
"impractical" and pains-taking effort worth the time and money.

Carl  

-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-bounces at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-bounces at asis.org] On
Behalf Of Johnson, Bryce
Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2005 12:55 PM
To: Heather Hedden; SIGIA-L
Subject: RE: [Sigia-l] Web site A-Z indexes

I would think that the types of collections that would benefit most from
the creation of an A-Z index are the ones that make human indexing
impractical if not impossible.

>From <http://www.web-indexing.org/about-web-indexing.htm>
"Indexing is an analytic process of determining which concepts are worth
indexing, what entry labels to use, and how to arrange the entries. As
such, web indexing is best done by individuals skilled in the craft of
indexing, either through formal training or through self-taught reading
and study."

Has anyone ever come across a non-human indexed collection that did a
decent job in creating an A-Z index? You could have a list of terms not
to index that seems easy, but arranging the entries would be tricky.

Bryce

|-----Original Message-----
|From: sigia-l-bounces at asis.org
|Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2005 1:27 PM
|Subject: [Sigia-l] Web site A-Z indexes
|
|Some professional indexers (traditionally for back-of-the-book print 
|alphabetical indexes) are interested in offering their contract 
|indexing services to create A-Z indexes for web sites and intranets. A 
|Web Indexing Special Interest Group of the American Society of Indexers

|has been reactivated with a new web site http://www.web-indexing.org/ 
|and a new online discussion forum 
|http://groups.yahoo.com/group/web-indexing/
|
|Are information architects (and related web professionals) interested 
|in contracting professional indexers for such limited projects of 
|creating A-Z indexes? If not, why not? If yes, why don't we see more of

|this activity?
|
|Admittedly A-Z indexes are not suitable for all site. They are best for

|relatively static sites, or parts of sites that are somewhat static, 
|sites that are not too big (tens or hundreds of pages, not thousands), 
|and for sites with repeat visitors.
|
...
|
|Heather Hedden
|Web Indexing SIG Coordinator
|
------------
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