Indexing
Indexing
Published: 6 July 2012
Sir, -
Three monographs have come my way, as a reviewer, recently: Michael Anesko,
Monopolizing the Master (Stanford University Press), Leah Price, How To Do
Things with Books in Victorian Britain (Princeton University Press), Ann
Rigney, The Afterlives of Walter Scott (Oxford University Press). They are
impressively learned. But the learning is impaired by their indexing - a
systemic impairment in academic monographs nowadays, I think.
Endnotes
(whose large-scale replacement of footnotes is another issue) make up a
substantial portion of the book; up to one third of the total text in one case.
The bodies of the works are conscientiously indexed - but not the notes. Given
the expansiveness of the endnote - up to 500 words or more - a lot of the
scholarly life, and most of the skirmishing, is relegated to them. Fellow
scholars are not mentioned in the text, or in the index, but figure there -
obscurely in the book’s undergrowth. So too with conceptual topics important to
the books’ arguments.
The
Society of Indexers, whose conference is taking place in Brighton this year,
July 11-13, regularly brings this practice to the notice of academic
publishers. There is, probably, a cost issue. But it constitutes a disservice
to the authors whom the publishers, in other ways, serve so well.
JOHN
SUTHERLAND Department of English, University College London, Gower Street,
London WC1.
No comments:
Post a Comment