Conference Workshop: Creating Website Indexes

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Hedden Information Management

Conference Workshop: Creating Website Indexes

This half-day workshop presented by Heather Hedden instructs participants on how to create hyperlinked back-of-the-book style indexes on web sites or intranets. The presentation content, examples, and exercises come from the original full 13-week series online courses that has been offered by Hedden Information Management in 2005 and 2006 (which has since been shortened to a 4 week workshop as offered through the continuing education program of Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science). A review of HTML codes will be provided, so participants with no prior experience with HTML may take this workshop, but prior experience with HTML is an advantage. Indexing experience is also not necessary, but a basic familiarity with the concepts of subentries, double-posting, and cross-references is assumed. Indexing techniques and tools specific to web site indexing will be presented.

Workshop Outline

1. Introduction to web site indexes
Types of web site indexes and an analysis of sample indexes and their source code.

2. HTML tags
A review of the HTML tags used to create links from and within an index and the tags used to indent subentries.

3. Indexing software overview
Overview of the different kinds of software available for web site indexing, and summary instruction on how to output HTML indexes created in Cindex, SKY, or Macrex into HTML indexes, with or without the conversion utility HTML/Prep and the conversion feature of XRefHT.

4. Indexing tools: XRefHT
Instruction and demonstration of using the freeware tool XRefHT (Windows or Java).

5. Indexing tools: HTML Indexer
Instruction and demonstration of using the commercial tool HTML Indexer (Windows).

6: Formatting and style
When and how to change a web index's format and style and special considerations in web indexing, such as those pertaining to subentries.

7. Indexing techniques
Deciding which web pages to index and what to index within the pages chosen, among headings and other concepts. Deciding how to word the index main entries and subentries, when and how to form entries, and how to come up with additional terms. Creating See and See also cross-references and considerations in editing the index structure.

8. Web index market
What sites are most suitable for indexes. Awareness, knowledge, and demand for web site indexes. Includes discussion of marketing for freelancers and the issue of index maintenance.

9. Related topics
Taxonomies, database indexes, and meta data indexing.