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Creating an Indexing System for
Periodical Articles on a Personal Computer
Peter Basset (London)
Documentation et Art de
l'Acteur
Records and Images of the Art of the Performer
18ème Congrès
International, Stockholm 3-7 septembre1990
18th International Congress, Stockholm 3-7 September 1990
Editor: Barbro Stribolt (Drottningholms Teatermuseum).
Stockholm : 1992, p. 33-34
In 1987 the Laban Centre
Library made a decision to "go it alone" and
index articles in dance magazines on our recently aquired
Personal Computer. I won't go into all the reasons for
our making this decision. It is perhaps sufficient to say
that, because of the way in which Academic dance courses
were developing at the Centre, which is reflected in the
periodical titles that we purchase, existing indexing
services either did not use the sort of index headings
that our students wanted to use, were not simple enough
to use or just did not exist. There is, as you know, no
on-line database for dance. It did not seem to be very
likely that any cooperative periodicals indexing would
get off the ground in the foreseeable future. If it did,
would it meet our needs, specially those of speed in
indexing recently published articles?
We were spending over £1000 a year on periodicals, most
of the UK titles and a range of French, German and
American periodicals plus Australian, Canadian, a few
third world language publications and a number of
peripheral subject periodicals. It was felt that, for the
outlay, the periodicals were seriously underutilised by
students, simply because of the lack of any easily used
indexes.
Our students ask an amazing range of questions on all
aspects of dance, which reflects the range of our courses
from professional dance training to higher academic
degrees. They also reflect the wide range of origin of
our students. At any one time we tend to have students
from some 30-43 countries. So their questions cover an
extremely wide range of interests and dance styles. We
do, in fact, need to cover all aspects of dance, all
styles and all subjects from administration to
phenomenology. This means that their questions are either
very general or extremely detalled and only about 50 per
cent are name orientated, a person, company or dance.
It seemed to me that the advantage of a PC with a
relatively large capacity and a fairly basic software
package would just tip the balance in favour of
"going it alone". Because we hoped that, in
time other dance libraries in London would join in, we
deliberately aimed at an inexpensive computer - an
Amstrad PC 1512 and a software package developed by the
University of London called MIRABILIS costing £250.
Mirabilis is ideally suited to the needs of a periodicals
database. It appears to be very flexible (I have found
all sorts of uses for it apart from indexing periodicals
including my book order system, and producing periodicals
and thesis lists). Up to 15 fields are available in each
entry and although the amount of data that can be input
into each field is limited, this does not matter greatly
for periodicals indexing and listing which is primally a
matter of numerous but brief entries. The main
disadvantage, at present, is that Mirabilis is not
publically available as it was a victim of recent
financial cuts at the University of London. It is
rumoured that eventually a commercial version will be
issued.
The basic entries were easy to set up. Fields were
selected - author and title of article, name
and date of the periodical (The name is
abbreviated to a four letter code e.g: Ballet
International to Blnt) a field for details of issues,
month, volume, pagination and details of photographs,
bibliographies etc. and two fields are included for
indexing the contents of an article. This last has been a
most important and significant feature in the successful
use of the database. The average title of a periodical
even in serious journals tends towards the lively and
journalistic in style, designed to grab the attention,
not to indicate precisely the contents of the article.
Because all of the articles were in the stock of the
Library it was not felt to be necessary to provide an
abstract. Detailed indexing should be sufficient and it
is an essential part of a students learning process to
evaluate information for themselves.
I spent a considerable time pondering the form that the
index would take. I was unable to find any published
danse thesaurus. After reading a few highly technical
volumes on the making of thesaurus I must admit to
failing to see how other systems met my needs of relative
simplicity combined with an ability to relate different
levels of a subject to each other. I again determined to
"go it alone" and create our own indexing
system. This was not quite so foolish as it might seem as
I have devised a number of information filing systems,
mostly for Local Studies Collection and reference
collections during my career.
Because I wanted the indexing system to describe both the
precise subject of an article, and to relate to more
general aspects of the subject I reverted to a technique
learnt during my days at Library School back in the early
sixties - chain indexing. The essence of this is
to use a word chain based, on the Dewey Decimal
Classification to establish the terms under which entries
are filed and the construction of related references in
dictionary book catalogues. I found that it was possible
to establish a word chain for each article, that would,
when entered in a searchable field in the database
provide lists of articles both on specific and general
subjects. There is of course no need for a classification
system to provide the "spine" of each chain
although some system has to be set up to ensure that
standard word chains and sequences are used.
A number of conventions need to be created and observed.
The chain always works from the general to the specific
in a logical order. The actual terms used and the
decisions as to which terms are more general than others
are entirely up to the compiler of the system but they
should be based on the needs of the users of the system
and the service for which he is making the index. And
once decisions about order have been made they must be
used constantly. I do this by creating another database,
listing all the chains used which can then be sorted
alphabetically and printed out for use as a reference
tool. As a further check I also list each link in the
chains in reverse order, making an index of all words
used.
I began in the traditional way by indexing 100 articles
and formulated my basic rules, abbreviations and
consistent forms of entry from these.
The system has proved to be very flexible. It is possible
to index and retrieve concepts as well as names. It is of
course possible to create a word chain for all
appropriate subjects within one article. We limit what is
indexed to main articles and reviews of about half a
page. However all reviews of ballets and dances over one
paragraph in length are indexed if they form part of a
larger review or article. Brief news items and snippits
are not listed or indexed.
I fully appreciate that in all this, all I have done is
to reinvent the wheel. I am sure that others are working
on similar systems. I am a great believer in cooperation
but know how difficult it is to suit every participant in
a cooperative scheme and how difficult it is to
participate in a cooperative scheme in which your needs
are not being fully met. I am equally sure that as
technology develops it will become easier to transfer
data between one system and another. What I do think is
that it is important to reinvent the wheel if necessary
rather than struggle to adapt an existing system that is
not quite right for the particular needs of an
institution. I hope that our system might be of interest
to other institutions and I shall be happy to discuss
this and other systems with any interested persons.
18th Congress
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