Review of the
journal paper,” What makes a good web index?”
This review
is based on the content given in the article titled “ What makes a good web
index?” by the author, Maureen Henninger in the journal , the indexer , vol.21,
No. 4 in October 1999.
The author
is an expert in the field of web indexing and a member of the instructors
educating others to create user friendly web indexing through short courses.
As per the
author, the creation of any document cannot be considered as a good effort without
indexing.
A number of
indexing schemes are discussed in the paper.
1) Classification
Similar materials are placed together. Most of
the traditional books, web publications, bibliographies and web sites follow
this scheme. Some of the typical examples include Britannica internet guide and
yahoo.
2) Indexing
This helps to retrieve specific
items from huge data. 2 types are:
a)
Key
word indexing: Easy to create by
computer and humans
b)
Concept
indexing: Created more easily by human
indexers.
In web publishing, key word indexing
is more popular.
3) Meta tags and other meta data
Metadata is used in 4 different
ways
a)
Identifying metadata
This helps to locate the
data using the concept of core elements.
b)
Descriptive
metadata
In this, the attributes
like subjects, description etc. for the identification of data.
c)
Annotation
Though annotation is not
an indexing, it is extremely useful.
d)
Alphabetical
lists of key words and concepts.
Though this is the most
efficient, expensive, so used for only important sites.
4) Navigation devices and aids.
In a web document there can be
a sense of disorientation. To alleviate this, navigation devices may be used which will
provide immediate information available in the complete document.
Conclusion
Efficient
indexing of a web document is a very complex process. This article gives
different logics for the systematic indexing and the limitations of each
method.
