Book‐indexes as building blocks for a cumulative index
Manfred Kochen, Renata Tagliacozzo · American Documentation · 1967
Abstract The advantages of a cumulative subject‐index, built by merging the subject‐indexes of books, are illustrated; and the conditions under which such cumulation would be feasible are discussed. A mathematical model for estimating the overlap between book indexes, applied to a sample of books belonging to the same subject area, show that the overlap is surprisingly small. Some statistical properties and grammatical features of book‐indexes are described in an attempt to determine how much they depart from the characteristics of book‐indexes ideally suited for cumulation. Possible reasons accounting for the great variability of index‐entries are discussed.