From: SMTP%"@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU:LISTSERV@BINGVMB.BITNET" 1-AUG-1994 18:32:08.20 To: SOLIBJA CC: Subj: File: "INDEX-L LOG9407C" Date: Mon, 1 Aug 1994 18:33:33 +0000 From: BITNET list server at BINGVMB (1.7f) Subject: File: "INDEX-L LOG9407C" To: Julius Ariail ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Jul 1994 00:07:49 -0500 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: John Wylie Subject: Re: Vacation from indexing In-Reply-To: <199407142349.AA04437@metronet.com> I've read part of Larry's book and found it excellent. I don't own a copy and have returned the one I borrowed. I don't hesitate to recommend it to any professional or serious indexer. Cheers. . . John V. Wylie John Wylie Consulting, Inc. 2818 Landershire Lane Garland TX 75044-5974 214-495-4410 jwylie@metronet.com CServe 72730,1426 Selling Genealogical CDs and Software Ask for an online catalog On Thu, 14 Jul 1994, Kate wrote: > I note that Nancy Mulvany's book and Wellisch's book are often mentioned > on this list. Does anyone have an opinion on "The Art of Indexing" by > Larry Bonura (Wiley, 1994). The author has a technical writing background. > > Kate McCain > mccainkw@duvm.ocs.drexel.edu > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 18 Jul 1994 08:13:45 -0500 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Maryann Corbett Subject: Twin Cities chapter of ASI--Annual Meeting The Twin Cities Chapter of the American Society of Indexers will hold its annual meeting for 1994 on Wednesday, July 27, at 7:00 p.m. in the Information Management Lab at the Library of the College of St.Catherine, St. Paul, Minnesota. The main event of the meeting will be a demonstration of indexing software. Diana Witt will demonstrate Cindex and Macrex, and Theresa Wolner will talk about using word processing software, as opposed to dedicated index- ing programs, for the job of indexing. Both Diana and Theresa have long experience with indexing and with the habits and preferences of different editors and indexers; both have served as chairs of this chapter, and Diana is past national president of ASI and teaches an indexing course at St. Catherine's. Because this is the annual meeting, it will also include reports about the activities of the chapter during the past year and the results of chapter elections. Information about this year's national annual meeting will be available, too. Reports will be given after the demos. To get to the meeting: From eastbound I-94: Take the Cretin-Vandalia exit south to Randolph Avenue, then turn west (left) and follow Randolph to Fairview Avenue. At Fairview, turn right (south) and proceed to the campus entrance. From westbound I-94: Take the Snelling Avenue exit south to Randolph Avenue, then turn east (right) and follow Randolph Avenue to Fairview Avenue. At Fairview turn left (south) and proceed to the campus entrance. From I-494: Take Highway 5 to St. Paul, exit on Edgecumbe Rd., and take Fairview Avenue (north) to St.Catherine's. The entrance to the campus will be on your left. From I-35E: Exit at Randolph Avenue, and Follow Randolph Avenue west to Fairview; turn left and the campus entrance will be on your right. PLEASE NOTE: Road construction is rampant in St. Paul. There may be detours on any of these routes on the day of the meeting. Park in the O'Shaughnessy Auditorium lot. Walk across campus to the library. The information management lab is in room 105 of the library building. Questions? Call Maryann Corbett at 612-297-2952 (w) or 612-645-5985(h). Maryann Corbett maryann.corbett@revisor.leg.state.mn.us ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 18 Jul 1994 10:10:28 -0800 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Julie Lawyer -- Ext 1331 Subject: The Art of Indexing" by Larry Bonura On Thu, 14 Jul 1994, Kate wrote: > I note that Nancy Mulvany's book and Wellisch's book are often mentioned > on this list. Does anyone have an opinion on "The Art of Indexing" by > Larry Bonura (Wiley, 1994). The author has a technical writing background. > > Kate McCain > mccainkw@duvm.ocs.drexel.edu > On Fri, 15 Jul 1994 John wrote: > I've read part of Larry's book and found it excellent. I don't own a copy > and have returned the one I borrowed. I don't hesitate to recommend it to > any professional or serious indexer. > Cheers. . . > > John V. Wylie I agree, an excellent book. It is part of a series. Perhaps the other books in the series are also of high quality. One was on project management by Joann Hackos. I don't remember the others on the list. It is one of the resources that I used for an in-house style guide for indexing online help. But then, I am a writer not a professional indexer so I'm glad to hear your opinions. ***************************************************** * * * Julie Lawyer JulieL@mdli.com * * NOTE: Please use the correct email address. * * Be sure you use JulieL not Julie. * * * ***************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Jul 1994 15:17:44 ECT Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: bob wallace Subject: two trademarks ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Here's something that may be of interest to folks working on publications related to modems or telephone service. According to NYNEX (telephone co.), Call Waiting and Touch-tone are trademarks (of Bell Labs). Carol Roberts rw16@cornell.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 21 Jul 1994 12:49:16 ECT Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "Dianne Bean, UNO" Subject: Any comments?-A Lurker ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- From: IN%"PACS-L@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU" "Public-Access Computer Systems Forum" 20-JU L- 1994 15:51:59.40 To: IN%"PACS-L@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU" "Multiple recipients of list PACS-L" CC: Subj: RE: INDEXING the INTERNET Return-path: Received: from UHUPVM1.UH.EDU by jazz.ucc.uno.edu (PMDF #2820 ) id <01HEXNV1T0008X9EV7@jazz.ucc.uno.edu>; Wed, 20 Jul 1994 15:51:39 CST Received: from UHUPVM1.UH.EDU by UHUPVM1.UH.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 3924; Wed, 20 Jul 94 14:03:05 CDT Received: from UHUPVM1.UH.EDU (NJE origin LISTSERV@UHUPVM1) by UHUPVM1.UH.EDU (LMail V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 3880; Wed, 20 Jul 1994 10:48:25 -0500 Date: 20 Jul 1994 10:46:37 -0500 (CDT) From: Nick Arnett Subject: RE: INDEXING the INTERNET Sender: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L Reply-to: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum Message-id: <01HEXNVWDCA68X9EV7@jazz.ucc.uno.edu> Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT 2 Messages, 162 Lines ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- At 3:40 PM 7/19/94 -0500, Jonathan Rogers wrote: [deletia] >The concept sounds cool, but how would billing be handled? You don't >seriously expect them to make their full text/image databases available free >of charge? Actually, I expect to see this sort of thing happening increasingly, as people recognize that the value of being able to *find* information greatly exceeds that of the information itself. The world is getting turned on its head, thanks to the near-elimination of distribution costs as a barrier to entry, due to network delivery. What does everybody complain about vis-a-vis the Internet -- "There's great stuff out there, but I can't find anything." One of these days, IAC or someone like them will recognize that the greater value is in packaging the index, rather than the actual documents. It's like a library -- even though the books, magazines, etc. are free; the "cost" is the time and trouble it takes to find what you wanted in the midst of all of them. I'd be really interested in developing a strategic plan that used this approach -- pay for the packaging and navigation but the documents are free. I don't think it'll work for all kinds of information, but for huge collections, I think it's the direction everyone will take. Nick Multimedia Computing Corp. Campbell, California *----- From: JL.GJM@ISUMVS.IASTATE.EDU (Gerry McKiernan) Subject: Value-Added and the Internet In response to a recent post concerning a possible scenario for Indexing the Internet by expanding/extending the mandate of existing abstracting and indexing services, David Damouth, finely articulated a view that sees the potential limitations of such a scenario, and the benefit of alternatives that are now available, or in development. I agree with David's view that we must provide "free- text" searching of Internet resources, as he states the matter of what is "appropriate" and "significant" in many cases is indeed in the eye of the beholder. An indexing/abstract service by its nature would be more selective, including only those items its considers MOST important/significant. I do not advocate that such "value-added" access be the ONLY means of access, but that it be one of many enhance- ments to the resource that permits users to search for relevant Internet resources that are judged (by the service's policy committee/advisory group) to be Appropriate AND Significant. Applying current A/I practices now, users should expect to search the appropriate database using a standard/controlled vocabulary (or subject headings) & thus be able to identify relevant in a more (or less) consistent manner as they do now for non-Internet resources in existing bibliographic, etc. databases. As with all Internet clearinghouse activities, Netters should should be provided with an opportunity to nominate resources which they consider to be Appropriate and Significant to the advisory board and/or to post titles for a network-appropriate vote for inclusion. The intent here is not to regulate (or censor) but to separate INFORMATION from NOISE (:*>) - To ADD VALUE where VALUE should be ADDED. Gerry McKiernan Coordinator, Science and Technology Section Iowa State University Ames IA 50011 gerrymck@iastate.edu "THINK RADICALLY, ACT LOGICALLY" ################### To the extent that manual cataloging and indexing is done by humans, it will obviously be done by the professionals in existing organizaitions - who else it there? But material indexed by an organization will also be physically stored by that organization, to insure it remains available. The Internet informal resources are just too flaky to waste time on - resources come and go at the whim of local computer owners. But there is another aspect to your question. You said something like "appropriate" material. But appropriate is in the eye of the beholder. Further, we are rapidly approaching the condition where there is far more material than can even be examined, much less indexed, by humans. I think the ony feasible solution is automatic indexing - using techniques like WAIS, and other more powerful indexing schemes that are coming out of research now. These aren't perfect, and are sometimes downright pathetic, but they are a whole lot better than nothing. And they are essentially free, and fast enough to cope in real time with the rapidly expanding and changing Internet information collection. There is one automatic indexer that has compared favorably to professional human indexers in an ojbective test, but as far as I know it is not yet ready for general use (David Evans at CMU has published a paper or two on this). There is still a place for small focussed collections that are carefully chosen by specialist humans. These are the equivalent of professional journals today. The automatic index exists in addition to these formal indexed collections, not in place of them. Also we need the Interpedia, which I view as an organized superset of all the little collections, adding a layer of human evaluations and judgements (via the SOAP idea) on top of whatever existing organization and indexing already exists. The hypertext pointer notions makes it possible to add such a layer without disturbing the existing organization of the material, and also allows the same material to be simultaneously indexed and organized many different ways by different people. -- /Dave David E. Damouth; Xerox Webster Research Center damouth@wrc.xerox.com fax: 716-265-7133 voice: 716-422-3186 (Mon. & Tues. 7:30 am - 4:30 pm) 716-381-2719 other times; answering machine available)