Indexing

Piet de Keyser is head librarian of the Katholieke Hogeschool Leuven, an institute for higher education in Louvain, Belgium. He published many articles on literary history, philosophy and library sciences. He teaches indexing in a Belgian Library and Information Sciences school.

Indexing consists of both novel and more traditional techniques. Cutting-edge indexing techniques, such as automatic indexing, ontologies, and topic maps, were developed independently of older techniques such as thesauri, but it is now recognized that these older methods also hold expertise.

Indexing describes various traditional and novel indexing techniques, giving information professionals and students of library and information sciences a broad and comprehensible introduction to indexing. This title consists of twelve chapters: an Introduction to subject readings and theasauri; Automatic indexing versus manual indexing; Techniques applied in automatic indexing of text material; Automatic indexing of images; The black art of indexing moving images; Automatic indexing of music; Taxonomies and ontologies; Metadata formats and indexing; Tagging; Topic maps; Indexing the web; and The Semantic Web.

List of figures

List of abbreviations

Preface

About the author

Chapter 1: Introduction to subject headings and thesauri

Abstract:

Introduction

Standards for controlled vocabularies

Precoordination and postcoordination

General do's and don'ts in selecting index terms

Subject headings

Thesauri

Creating and maintaining a controlled vocabulary

How to find subject headings and thesauri

Thesaurus software

Multilingual thesauri

Interoperability between vocabularies

What makes a good indexing system?

Chapter 2: Automatic indexing versus manual indexing

Abstract:

Introduction

Arguments against manual indexing

Is indexing by the author or editor a valuable alternative?

Arguments in favour of manual indexing

Some misconceptions about automatic indexing

Conclusion

Chapter 3: Techniques applied in automatic indexing of text material

Abstract:

Introduction

Lexical analysis

The use of stop word lists

Stemming

Extracting meaningful word combinations

Index term weighting

Linking words and word combinations to a controlled vocabulary

Automatic classification

What can be expected of automatic text indexing?

Chapter 4: Automatic indexing of images

Abstract:

Introduction

Images on the Internet

Context-based indexing

Content-based indexing

Automatic image annotation

Mixed techniques

The purpose of it all

Chapter 5: The black art of indexing moving images

Abstract:

Manual indexing of moving images

Why index moving images automatically?

Indexing based on speech or text recognition

Keyframe indexing

The future of video indexing

Chapter 6: Automatic indexing of music

Abstract:

Introduction

Some examples of music retrieval

Indexing methods behind the retrieval

Chapter 7: Taxonomies and ontologies

Abstract:

The librarian's strained relation to taxonomies and ontologies

What are taxonomies and what are they used for?

Ontologies

The importance of taxonomies and ontologies

Chapter 8: Metadata formats and indexing

Abstract:

Introduction

What are metadata?

Metadata and the library world

Some important metadata standards

Bridges between standards

The benefits of metadata standards

What about indexing?

Chapter 9: Tagging

Abstract:

What is tagging?

Why tagging?

Advantages and disadvantages of tagging

Towards a taxonomy of tagging

Tagging in the book and library world

User tags and author keywords

How tags are displayed

Conclusions

Chapter 10: Topic Maps

Abstract:

Introduction

The TAO model of Topic Maps

The technical side of Topic Maps

Examples of Topic Maps

Are Topic Maps the future of indexing?

Chapter 11: Indexing the web

Abstract:

Is it possible to index the web?

Manual web indexes

Bookmark sites

Evaluation of manual web indexing

Web indexing by search engines

How search engines work

Google's PageRank

What about indexing the 'deep web'?

Chapter 12: The Semantic Web

Abstract:

Introduction

The criticism against the actual web

Planning Web 3.0

A timetable for the Semantic Web

The Semantic Web and traditional library instruments

Index