Automated Techniques in Comprehensive Indexing
Sister Claudia · The American Archivist · 1967
I N the words of its preface, the New Catholic Encyclopedia, being published by McGraw-Hill in 1967, "proposes to meet the need for an authoritative work of reference for the Englishspeaking world.It is not a revision of the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1907-1914, but a completely new work, abreast of the present state of knowledge and reflecting the outlook and interests of the second half of the twentieth century.""In addition to providing full information on the doctrine, organization, and history of the Catholic Church through the close of Vatican II, the Encyclopedia includes within its scope the persons, institutions, religions, philosophies, scientific developments, and movements that have affected Catholicism in the past or are of particular concern at present."There is a total of about 17,000 separate articles in the Encyclopedia, written by some 4,800 scholars, each qualified in his field.Every article appears over the name of its author.The contributors are men and women, Catholic and non-Catholic, from all parts of the world.The Index volume covers the approximately 15 million words of the Encyclopedia, more than 7,000 functional illustrations, and about 300 maps.It also includes the sigla, or list of abbreviations, used in the bibliographies and the complete list of contributors with full identification.Preparation for the index began in the fall of 1963.The editor spent the first weeks visiting the editorial offices of the standard encyclopedias to see what methods were being used in editing encyclopedia indexes.These included the Britannica, Compton, and World Book in Chicago, and Collier's, Americana, and Grolier in New York.The tour also gave an opportunity for interviews with John Rothman of the New York Times, Robert Kingery of the The author is Librarian of Marygrove College, Detroit, Mich., and the 1965-67 president of the Catholic Library Association.From 1963 to 1966 she was on leave from Marygrove to serve as index editor