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42-447: Simple queries: Queries accessing publication indexes : Queries based on the proximity of words to each other in a document: Queries across multiple dimensions : Queries based on relevance : The latter example specifies using a specific algorithm for logistic regression . [REDACTED]  This article incorporates public domain material from the United States Government This Library of Congress article

84-425: A library catalog . An index differs from a word index, or concordance , in focusing on the subject of the text rather than the exact words in a text, and it differs from a table of contents because the index is ordered by subject, regardless of whether it is early or late in the book, while the listed items in a table of contents is placed in the same order as the book. In a traditional back-of-the-book index ,

126-675: A back-of-book-style index to a website or intranet ), search engine indexing , database indexing (the application of a pre-defined controlled vocabulary such as MeSH to articles for inclusion in a database), and periodical indexing (indexing of newspapers, journals, magazines). Some indexers with expertise in controlled vocabularies also work as taxonomists and ontologists . Some indexers specialize in particular subject areas, such as anthropology, business, computers, economics, education, government documents, history, law, mathematics, medicine, psychology, and technology. An indexer can be found for any subject. In " The Library of Babel ",

168-487: A book So to his mind was young Leander's look. A similar reference to indexes is in Shakespeare 's lines from Troilus and Cressida (I.3.344), written nine years later: And in such indexes, although small pricks To their subsequent volumes, there is seen The baby figure of the giant mass Of things to come at large. But according to G. Norman Knight, "at that period, as often as not, by an 'index to

210-493: A book' was meant what we should now call a table of contents." Until about the end of the nineteenth century, books, fiction as well as non-fiction, sometimes had very detailed chapter titles, which could be several sentences long. Among the first indexes – in the modern sense – to a book in the English language was Leonard Mascall's "A booke of the arte and maner how to plant and graffe all sortes of trees" printed in 1575. Another

252-439: A book, publishers or book packagers . Some publishers and database companies employ indexers. Before indexing software existed, indexes were created using slips of paper or, later, index cards . After hundreds of such slips or cards were filled out (as the indexer worked through the pages of the book proofs), they could then be shuffled by hand into alphabetical order, at which point they served as manuscript to be typeset into

294-446: A conventional static index; however, an embedded index can save time in the long run when the material is updated or repaginated. This is because, with a static index, if even a few pages change, the entire index must be revised or recreated while, with an embedded index, only the pages that changed need updating or indexing. Indexes are also designed to help the reader find information quickly and easily. A complete and truly useful index

336-575: A review of the 1859 A. H. Clough translation, Plutarch's depictions of Antony, Coriolanus, Alcibiades, and the Cato the Elder were praised as deeply drawn. The reviewer found the sayings of Themistocles to be "snowy and splendid", those of Phocion to be "curt and sharp", and those of Cato "grave and shrewdly humorous". Carl Rollyson lauded the biography of Caesar as proof Plutarch is "loaded with perception" and stated that no biographer "has surpassed him in summing up

378-420: A short story by Jorge Luis Borges , there is an index of indexes that catalogues all of the books in the library, which contains all possible books. Kurt Vonnegut 's novel Cat's Cradle includes a character who is a professional indexer and believes that "indexing [is] a thing that only the most amateurish author [undertakes] to do for his own book." She claims to be able to read an author's character through

420-568: A way of representing the knowledge structures inherent in traditional back-of-the-book indexes. The concept embodied by book indexes lent its name to database indexes , which similarly provide an abridged way to look up information in a larger collection, albeit one for computer use rather than human use. In the English language, indexes have been referred to as early as 1593, as can be seen from lines in Christopher Marlowe 's Hero and Leander of that year: Therefore, even as an index to

462-415: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Index (publishing) An index ( pl. : usually indexes , more rarely indices ) is a list of words or phrases ('headings') and associated pointers ('locators') to where useful material relating to that heading can be found in a document or collection of documents. Examples are an index in the back matter of a book and an index that serves as

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504-557: Is erroneously held to be the earliest index found in an English book. The word is derived from Latin , in which index means "one who points out", an "indication", or a " forefinger ". In Latin, the plural form of the word is indices . In English, the plural "indices" is commonly used in mathematical and computing contexts , and sometimes in bibliographical contexts – for example, in the 17-volume Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia (1999–2002). However, this form

546-536: Is famous for having lent his name as editor-in-chief to the first complete English translation of Plutarch's Lives . This 17th-century translation is available at The MIT Internet Classics Archive . These translations are linked with D in the table below; those marked (D) in parentheses are incomplete in the HTML version. G : Project Gutenberg contains several versions of 19th-century translations of these Lives , see here and here . The full text version ( TXT ) of

588-415: Is not simply a list of the words and phrases used in a publication (which is properly called a concordance ), but an organized map of its contents, including cross-references , grouping of like concepts, and other useful intellectual analysis. Sample back-of-the-book index excerpt: In books, indexes are usually placed near the end (this is commonly known as "BoB" or back-of-book indexing). They complement

630-672: Is now seen as an archaism by many writers and commentators, who prefer the anglicised plural "indexes". "Indexes" is widely used in the publishing industry; in the International Standard ISO 999 , Information and documentation – Guidelines for the content, organization and presentation of indexes ; and is preferred by the Oxford Style Manual . The Chicago Manual of Style allows both forms. G. Norman Knight quotes Shakespeare 's lines from Troilus and Cressida (I.3.344) – "And in such indexes ..." – and comments: "But

672-590: Is the only professional organization in the United States devoted solely to the advancement of indexing, abstracting and related methods of information retrieval. Other similar societies include: Parallel Lives The Parallel Lives ( Ancient Greek : Βίοι Παράλληλοι , Bíoi Parállēloi ; Latin : Vītae Parallēlae ) is a series of 48 biographies of famous men written by the Greco-Roman philosopher, historian, and Apollonian priest Plutarch , probably at

714-470: Is then generated automatically from the embedded text using the position of the embedded headings to determine the locators. Thus, when the pagination is changed the index can be regenerated with the new locators. LaTeX documents support embedded indexes primarily through the MakeIndex package. Several widely used XML DTDs , including DocBook and TEI , have elements that allow index creation directly in

756-547: The table of contents by enabling access to information by specific subject, whereas contents listings enable access through broad divisions of the text arranged in the order they occur. It has been remarked that, while "[a]t first glance the driest part of the book, on closer inspection the index may provide both interest and amusement from time to time." Some principles of good indexing include: Indexing pitfalls: Some indexers specialize in specific formats, such as scholarly books, microforms, web indexing (the application of

798-582: The , and , and in . J. G. Ballard 's "The Index" is a short story told through the form of an index to an "unpublished and perhaps suppressed" autobiography. The American Society for Indexing, Inc. (ASI) is a national association founded in 1968 to promote excellence in indexing and increase awareness of the value of well-designed indexes. ASI serves indexers, librarians, abstractors, editors, publishers, database producers, data searchers, product developers, technical writers, academic professionals, researchers and readers, and others concerned with indexing. It

840-631: The Elder, Philopoemen, Flamininus, Pyrrhus, Marius, Lysander, Sulla, Cimon, Lucullus, Nicias, Crassus. Volume 2. Sertorius, Eumenes, Agesilaus, Pompey, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Phocion, Cato the Younger, Agis, Cleomenes, Tiberius Gracchus and Gaius Gracchus, Demosthenes, Cicero, Demetrius, Mark Antony, Dion, Marcus Brutus, Aratus, Artaxerxes II, Galba, Otho. Of the biographies in Parallel Lives , that of Antonius has been cited by multiple scholars as one of

882-543: The Great and Julius Caesar , or Demosthenes and Cicero . It is a work of considerable importance, not only as a source of information about the individuals described, but also about the times in which they lived. Parallel Lives was Plutarch's second set of biographical works, following the Lives of the Roman Emperors from Augustus to Vitellius . Of these, only the Lives of Galba and Otho survive. As he explains in

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924-515: The XML files. Most word processing software , such as StarWriter / OpenOffice.org Writer , Microsoft Word , and WordPerfect , as well as some desktop publishing software (for example, FrameMaker and InDesign ), as well as other tools (for example, MadCap Software 's Flare), have some facility for embedded indexing as well. TExtract and IndexExploit support embedded indexing of Microsoft Word documents. An embedded index requires more time to create than

966-402: The author, find information, so the professional indexer must act as a liaison between the text and its ultimate user. In the United States, according to tradition, the index for a non-fiction book is the responsibility of the author, but most authors do not actually do it. Most indexing is done by freelancers hired by authors, publishers or an independent business which manages the production of

1008-976: The beginning of the second century . It is also known as Plutarch's Lives ( Πλούταρχου Βίοι , Ploútarchou Bíoi ; Plutarchī Vītae ); Parallels ( Παράλληλα , Parállēla ; Parallela ); the Comparative Lives ( Συγκριτικοί Βίοι , Sygkritikoí Bíoi ; Vitae Comparatae ); the Lives of Illustrious Men ( Vitae Illustrium Virorum ); and the Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans ( Βίοι Ῥωμαίων καὶ Ἑλλήνων , Bioi Rhōmaiōn kai Hellēnōn ; Vitae Illustrium Virorum Graecorum et Romanorum or Graecorum Romanorumque Illustrium Vitae ). The lives are arranged in pairs to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings. The surviving Parallel Lives comprises 23 pairs of biographies, each pair consisting of one Greek and one Roman of similar destiny, such as Alexander

1050-484: The early Roman calendar . Plutarch has been praised for the liveliness and warmth of his portrayals, and his moral earnestness and enthusiasm, and the Lives have attracted a large circle of readers throughout the ages. Plutarch structured his Lives by pairing lives of famous Greeks with those of famous Romans. After each pair of lives he generally writes out a comparison of the preceding biographies. The table below gives

1092-485: The essence of a life – perhaps because no modern biographer has believed so intensely as Plutarch did in 'the soul of men'. John Langhorne, D.D. and William Langhorne, A.M.'s English translation, noted that Amiot, Abbe of Bellozane, published a French translation of the work during the reign of Henry II in the year 1558; and from that work it was translated into English, in the time of Elizabeth I . No other translation appeared until that of John Dryden . D : Dryden

1134-457: The first paragraph of his Life of Alexander , Plutarch was not concerned with writing histories, but with exploring the influence of character, good or bad, on the lives and destinies of famous men. He wished to prove that the more distant past of Greece could show its men of action and achievement as well as the more recent past of Rome. Plutarch's interest was primarily ethical ("For it is not Histories that I am writing, but Lives."), although

1176-433: The headings will include names of people, places, events, and concepts selected as being relevant and of interest to a possible reader of the book. The indexer performing the selection may be the author, the editor, or a professional indexer working as a third party. The pointers are typically page numbers, paragraph numbers or section numbers. In a library catalog the words are authors, titles, subject headings, etc., and

1218-398: The index he created for his own history text, and warns the narrator, an author, "Never index your own book." Vladimir Nabokov 's novel Pale Fire includes a parody of an index, reflecting the insanity of the narrator. Mark Danielewski 's novel House of Leaves contains an exhaustive 41 page index of words in the novel, including even large listings for inconsequential words such as

1260-487: The list of the biographies. Its order follows the one found in the Lamprias Catalogue , the list of Plutarch's works made by his hypothetical son Lamprias. The table also features links to several English translations of Plutarch's Lives available online. In addition to these 48 Parallel Lives , Plutarch wrote four unpaired biographies that are not considered to be parts of the Parallel Lives , but can be included in

1302-525: The lives, those of Epaminondas and Scipio Africanus or Scipio Aemilianus , are lost, and many of the remaining lives are truncated, contain obvious lacunae and/or have been tampered with by later writers. Plutarch's Life of Alexander is one of the few surviving secondary or tertiary sources about Alexander the Great , and it includes anecdotes and descriptions of incidents that appear in no other source. Likewise, his portrait of Numa Pompilius , an early Roman king, contains unique information about

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1344-471: The masterpieces of the series. In 1895, George Wyndham wrote that the first rank consists of the biographies of Themistocles, Alcibiades, Marius, Cato the Elder, Alexander, Demetrius, Antonius, and Pompey. Peter D'Epiro praised Plutarch's depiction of Alcibiades as "a masterpiece of characterization." Academic Philip A. Stadter singled out Pompey and Caesar as the greatest figures in the Roman biographies. In

1386-437: The pointers are call numbers . Internet search engines (such as Google ) and full-text searching help provide access to information but are not as selective as an index, as they provide non-relevant links, and may miss relevant information if it is not phrased in exactly the way they expect. Perhaps the most advanced investigation of problems related to book indexes is made in the development of topic maps , which started as

1428-409: The printed index. Software is available to aid the indexer in building a book index. There are several dedicated indexing software programs available to assist with the special sorting and copying needs involved in index preparation. Embedded indexing involves including the index headings in the midst of the text itself, but surrounded by codes so that they are not normally displayed. A usable index

1470-741: The real importance of this passage is that it establishes for all time the correct literary plural; we can leave the Latin form "indices" to the mathematicians (and similarly "appendices" to the anatomists)." The indexer reads through the text, identifying indexable concepts (those for which the text provides useful information and which will be of relevance for the text's readership). The indexer creates index headings to represent those concepts, which are phrased such that they can be found when in alphabetical order (so, for example, one would write 'indexing process' rather than 'how to create an index'). These headings and their associated locators (indicators to position in

1512-512: The revision of Dryden's translation by the English poet Arthur Hugh Clough is available (via download) Gutenberg here . These translations are linked with G in the table below. L : LacusCurtius has the translation by Bernadotte Perrin of part of the Moralia and all the Lives , published in the Loeb Classical Library 1914–1926; see here . These translations are linked with L in

1554-587: The table below. LV : LibriVox has many free public-domain audiobooks of the Parallel Lives , Volumes I, II, and III. These translations are linked with LV in the table below. P : The Perseus Project has several of the Lives , see here . The Lives available on the Perseus website are in Greek and in the English translation by Bernadotte Perrin (see under L above), and/or in an abbreviated version of Thomas North 's translations. This edition concentrates on those of

1596-417: The term Plutarch's Lives . The subjects of these four biographies are Artaxerxes , Aratus , Galba , and Otho . All dates are BC . The two-volume edition of Dryden's translation contains the following biographies: Volume 1. Theseus, Romulus, Lycurgus, Numa, Solon, Publicola, Themistocles, Camillus, Pericles, Fabius, Alcibiades, Coriolanus, Timoleon, Aemilius Paulus, Pelopidas, Marcellus, Aristides, Cato

1638-428: The text) are entered into specialist indexing software which handles the formatting of the index and facilitates the editing phase. The index is then edited to impose consistency throughout the index. Indexers must analyze the text to enable presentation of concepts and ideas in the index that may not be named within the text. The index is intended to help the reader, researcher, or information professional, rather than

1680-471: The work has significant historical value as well. The Lives was published by Plutarch late in his life after his return to Chaeronea and, if one may judge from the long lists of authorities given, it must have taken many years to compile. The chief manuscripts of the Lives date from the 10th and 11th centuries, and the first printed edition appeared in Rome in 1470. Thomas North 's 1579 English translation

1722-727: Was an important source-material for Shakespeare . Jacob Tonson printed several editions of the Lives in English in the late 17th century, beginning with a five-volume set printed in 1688, with subsequent editions printed in 1693, 1702, 1716, and 1727. The most generally accepted text is that of the minor edition of Carl Sintenis in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana (five volumes, Leipzig 1852–1855; reissued without much change in 1873–1875). There are annotated editions by I. C. Held, E. H. G. Leopold, Otto Siefert and Friedrich Blass and Carl Sintenis, all in German; and by Holden, in English. Two of

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1764-603: Was one in Plutarch 's Parallel Lives , in Sir Thomas North 's 1595 translation. A section entitled "An Alphabetical Table of the most material contents of the whole book" may be found in Henry Scobell 's Acts and Ordinances of Parliament of 1658. This section comes after "An index of the general titles comprised in the ensuing Table". Both of these indexes predate the index to Alexander Cruden 's Concordance (1737), which

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