Students aren’t interested in online information gateways about subjects. They’re interested in information related to their courses. That’s the message this week from ACRLog, the blog for academic and research librarians, as the blogger Steven Bell attempts to counsel professors and librarians on ways to reach out to students.
He cites a recent study in the journal Portal, in which Oregon State University librarians found that students were much more interested in information if it was linked to a course they were taking. Topic-oriented information collections were much less compelling. —Josh Fischman
16 Responses to For Students, It’s About Courses, Not Subjects
Alexander Davis - May 9, 2012 at 8:50 pm
Don’t forget about the use of the index to actually extend the narrative of a book, like in Nabokov’s playful index to “Pale Fire”: http://www.agbdavis.com/2010/09/games-played-in-pale-fires-index.html
lara_salamone - May 10, 2012 at 1:24 am
Yap, Indexers are among the smartest people .. I agree :)
mbelvadi - May 10, 2012 at 6:56 am
Isn’t it kind of like shooting fish in a barrel to use as your primary example of humor in indexing the index for a book written by a professional comedy writer? Can’t you give us any examples of clever Easter eggs in a scholarly book, for instance?
Ludo Totem - May 10, 2012 at 7:40 am
I’m going to have to do my first index shortly and I must say I am filled with trepidation. In anticipation, I glanced through the relevant chapter of the Chicago Manual of Style. My fears were not allayed. How complicated it all seemed! Not even alphabetization is straightforward. That said, I’ve already thought of at least one sly entry: “Charon, ferryman.”
For the rest, Franken’s use of an index to try to be funny isn’t original. Spy used to run articles, usually written by Joe Queenan, I think, that were nothing but mock indexes. I doubt they were the first to do it, either.
Matthew Leingang - May 10, 2012 at 8:01 am
“Calculus” by Michael Spivak has a couple of easter eggs in the index. One is “Grin and bear it”, which refers to the pages of integrals in the problem set. Another is “Klingenstein, K., trials and tribulations of”, which refers to the index itself.
jadams65 - May 10, 2012 at 8:34 am
Cross Reference, see Reference, Cross
Reference, Cross, see Cross Reference
dank48 - May 10, 2012 at 9:57 am
I’ve committed two indexes in my time, long ago. I completed the second just as the book containing the first came off press. I took a look at it. The first two entries were out of alphabetical order. When the handwriting on the wall is large enough . . .
Great series on an underappreciated aspect of the book biz. Like translation and design, it’s mainly noticed when something has gone wrong.
rgvonhorn - May 10, 2012 at 11:07 am
“slightly”!”appalled”!!!!! ach,ach,ach! How about “just a little bit horrified”. But then I do realize there are lots of people who are so often appalled these days that there may or must be degrees.
Stan Carey - May 10, 2012 at 11:09 am
I didn’t know Easter eggs had been extended to indexing; I’m mostly familiar with them from DVDs. But it makes perfect sense.
Futility Closet sometimes posts examples of strange and amusing indexes; for example:
http://www.futilitycloset.com/2012/03/01/more-amusing-indexes/
Ruth Ellis - May 10, 2012 at 3:46 pm
Julian Barnes used the index as an humorous extension to his book Letters from London 1990-95. Hazel Bell wrote about it in volume 22 of The Indexer and it’s available as a pdf from the magazine website
http://www.theindexer.org/files/22-3/22-3_147.pdf
hilda_smith - May 13, 2012 at 7:33 pm
My memory of this is faint, but I believe I heard once of a large medical textbook with the indexing entry:
Sexism, male, large amounts…
hilda_smith - May 13, 2012 at 7:34 pm
Sorry, I think it was an OB/GYN medical textbook
mkt42 - May 14, 2012 at 7:48 pm
Didn’t he also put “yellow pig” into his indexes?
John Cooper - May 17, 2012 at 12:19 pm
The best index I’ve ever read was Jan C. Wright’s index to Olav Martin Kvern’s “Real World Adobe InDesign 1.5.” The (highly functional and well-designed) 28-page index is also sprinkled with irresistable entries such as:
bald-faced lies about walking miles to school, 271 (*are not!*)
Cthulhu, 166
elves, use of in trapping, 401
indexers, upsetting, 191
jerks who bump your arm, 272
Kvern, Olav Martin
as alien weirdo, 172
as closet rocket scientist, 349
irrational fear of indexers, 191
moon, howling at, 366
“operating systems,” oxymoronic failure of, 76
overwrought illustrations of master page inheritance, 103
pigs, winged, 340
secret U.S. government color libraries, 379
sighing of page layout acolytes, 241
things Olav gets sheepish about, 457–458
things Olav is old enough to know
manual typewriters, 200
walking uphill to school in freezing cold, 271
weird things in visual cortex, 368
yawns, stifling, 326
The software about which this book was written is obsolete, but I’ll never get rid of this book.
John Cooper - May 17, 2012 at 1:03 pm
I see that in 2009, Jan Wright won the H.W. Wilson Award from the American Society for Indexing, in recognition of her work on a much later revision of this book: Real World Adobe InDesign CS3.
11182050 - May 23, 2012 at 11:18 am
I was thinking of Spivak when I read this. I believe I’ve seen “pig, yellow” in one of the indexes (indices).