ABSTRACT
This chapter considers two fundamental assumptions with regard to the back-of-the-book index: that there is a good index to a book that can be created, and that there is an ideal indexer who can do that creating. In considering these assumptions, it draws on definitions of the "good" index and the "ideal" indexer provided by The Chicago Manual of Style, thought by many to be the bible of modem book publishing, if not modem book indexing. The chapter compares subject indexes to the volume in hand essentially created by author, indexer, and computer, and then places those comparisons within the larger context of existing research. It suggests that current thinking about indexes and indexers may not stand up to close scrutiny. Future researchers might wish to question how closely the "informatization" of the world in the late twentieth century parallels the "indexing" of the world in the late nineteenth century, and whose interests the former "innovation" might serve.
