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Subject:an indexing question From:"Mark L. Levinson" <mark -at- MEMCO -dot- CO -dot- IL> Date:Sun, 14 Jun 1998 18:35:25 +0300
What do I do about this?
A book of ours describes, among other things, a database. (But
please keep reading anyway.)
Suppose, for analogy's sake, that we were describing products
for the kitchen: several kinds of forks, several kinds of
woks, several kinds of toasters, etc. etc.
In our descriptions of some kinds of items, we use special
characteristics: only for forks do we list number of tines. Only
for toasters do we list number of slots. But some characteristics
are common to all items: weight, color, price, etc. As the
products are described one after another, those characteristics
repeat themselves and mean the same thing with regard to each
product.
In our back-of-the-book index, I have no trouble indexing the
special characteristics like number of tines. My problem is
in the characteristics that repeat throughout the database.
Color appears everywhere, and wherever it appears it is no more
and no less important than anywhere else.
Should I list it this way?--
Color 7, 12, 18, 22, 29, 34, ...
If I do, then the reader is invited to look in all those places
and will not know how many of them to check before deciding that
essentially they all say the same thing.
Should I list it this way?--
Color
of eggbeaters 7
of forks 12
of toasters 18
of woks 22
etc. etc.
That takes a lot of space and may falsely imply that the
information is substantially different from occurrence to
occurrence.
Should I list it just once? The first occurrence, perhaps?
Color 7
That could imply that the characteristic doesn't exist in
other places.
Should I burden the book with a section describing common
characteristics, merely to serve as an index target?
Who has advice?
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- Mark L. Levinson - Memco Ltd. - Wallenberg 24 - 69719 Tel Aviv
- work: mark -at- memco -dot- co -dot- il / tel. +972-3-6450049 / fax +972-3-6450001
- home: nosnivel -at- netvision -dot- net -dot- il / tel. +972-9-9552411 or 9555720
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