Topic: Indexing glass periodicals

[SAS]

Dear Readers,
I haven't posted in quite some time. For the past several months (!) I have been engaged in indexing all 84 issues of Glass Collectors Digest (1987-2001). Fun & Games!!!! I am at the point where I have created an Authority File, have gone through and indexed all issues and am merrily typing it up. At some point next year, the completed index will be available through the West Virginia Museum of American Glass. (No, I am not receiving anything for doing this; I do it because I can and I am sick and tired of trying to find things in all those issues!) There truly is a lot of information in all those issues and it needs to be made available.
As some of you may know, I am a retired librarian and have indexed many things; I truly love to do indexing. But, at this point, I am curious to know if there is any published thesaurus for indexing glass books and periodicals. Most scientific, legal, and medical journals do have specific thesauri to assist with such an indexing endeavor. Ivo's Glass A to Z has been most helpful....thank you, Ivo! I have also consulted many other glass dictionaries and glossaries.
But, I would really like to know if there is a specific thesaurus for indexing the field of glass collecting.
Thank you very much!
Shirley Smith
Charleston, WV, USA
author, Glass Hen on Nest Covered Dishes, Collector Books, 2007

[Frank]

I guess that Duncan's would be invaluable resource in your endeavours. There are various encyclopaedias published and some on-line but not a specific thesaurus that I am aware of.

I have started an on-line bibliography that is free access as part of my Glass Study project. It can include index data too. Currently it contains some reviews, some keywords and some tables of contents.

Within the Study for members only I also include indexes of in copyright works as well as digitisations with restored images of out of copyright works and those that I can obtain licenses for. My indexes are basically digitisations  with all unnecessary words remove and descriptions images that retain the pagination. Which is only useful via search tool to locate page references rather than a structured index. This structure also allows annotations to be made highlighting errors and misprints etc. The Study is also intended to support multilingual corroborative glass research projects that are either private or available to members as the project owners desire. Still in the early days of development.

[krsilber]

That sounds like a challenging, laborious, and rewarding job!  Good for you for taking on the task.

The semantics of glassmaking is another challenge, as I'm sure you realize.  I don't know of any glass thesaurus either, and the two dictionaries I have don't give much in the way of alternate meanings.  Are there particular words you were wondering about?  You weren't going to look up every one...or were you?  Sounds like quite a project; I'm kind of interested in glass terminology.

...Just saw Franks' post.  What's Duncan's?

[Ron]

I agree that the information contained in all those issues is very valuable and sometimes unavailable anywhere else.

Can I assume this index will be more comprehensive than the ones that were available from the original publisher (The Glass Press / Richardson Printing Corp)?

[SAS]

Dear Readers,
Thank you so much for your replies. I truly appreciate it because I have no one else to "beat my head against" when it comes to the technicalities of researching glass and documenting glass.
Yes, my index will be much more specific and exhaustive than the few indexes that the publisher did. They were not very helpful at all. I am determined to index every pattern, every person, every company, every reprint of original catalog pages and every advertisement. Yes, advertisements! Although indexing advertisements is not something that is ever done following the many and intricate rules for creating an index, I feel that the advertisements that contain both color pictures and attributions for them should be indexed. It is hard enough to attribute a piece of glass as it is; any clue helps!
My index is already over a hundred pages. Although I am very much aware of the standards for creating an index, I have made modifications to enable it to be as user-friendly as possible. I believe that "user-friendly" is the key here....not following sometimes arcane rules that the average person doesn't know about. For example, both American and British rules for indexing standards rule that all subject heading are in all lower case letters except for proper names. I do not agree. There is something about not using capitalization that makes something hard to read. And, there are other typographical things that I am doing to facilitate reading that is not recommended by the powers that be. Did you know that it is incorrect to capitalize every word in a title except the first word? And, if that first word is an article (part of speech), one does not alphabetize by it even though it is included?
But I digress...... As you can tell, I dearly love the intricacies of dealing with research! I guarantee that my index will be useful.
Glen Thistlewood's articles on various themes in carnival glass are most useful. The few articles by William Heacock are also useful. I think that the articles on marbles are outstanding even though I don't know diddly-squat about marbles.
My index will contain a lot of SEE and SEE ALSO references because the terminology of glass collecting seems to have no standard. For example, which is the proper subject heading: slag glass, marble glass, or mosaic glass? What is the most widely accepted form of a company name? L.G. Wright? or just Wright? Henry Greener or just Greener? SEE ALSO references are in order here!!! Are drinking glasses put under Barware or Tableware or do they have their own specific subject heading. If so, does one tie that to goblets, tankards, etc. See what I mean?
At any rate, I am having a merry time creating something that I sincerely believe will be helpful to present and future collectors. Any advice or suggestions you all might want to offer would be sincerely appreciated.
Shirley in Charleston, WV

[Frank]

You will find that there is a lot of difference in terminology with a lot of discussions on specific terms scattered throughout this board. The terms vary not only from country to country but even from one glassworks to another - often with the same term having completely different meanings.

Company names vary through time, as well as in the different countries they trade in, and the names used by collectors do too. Oh, and that is before you take it account commonly used names, the names of the glassworks and of course errors in earlier attributions and misprints - all of which are rife.

Good luck 

[krsilber]

Hee Hee, encouraging, isn't he?

slag glass, marble glass, or mosaic glass?

...or end of day glass?

Frank's thoughts were mine exactly.  But you do the best you can, eh?  You might search the board for words like "terminology" or "semantic" to find threads about words people have discussed here.  Do you have anyone to help edit it, people to give you ideas?  The best way I can think of to find synonyms, alternative meanings, etc. would be to show it to people from a wide range of fields and homelands.  Or maybe bits and pieces, if it's 100 pages long.   The only other thing I can think of would be to look at glass books with really good indices, which I'm sure you've thought of (one I would recommend is Wilson's American Glass 1760-1930). 

I imagine you'd have to have a wide range of glass knowledge to do something like that, and I bet you learn a lot as well!  You've made me curious about your project.  If there's anything I can do to help, say the word.

[Lustrousstone]

For example, both American and British rules for indexing standards rule that all subject heading are in all lower case letters except for proper names. I do not agree. There is something about not using capitalization that makes something hard to read. And, there are other typographical things that I am doing to facilitate reading that is not recommended by the powers that be. Did you know that it is incorrect to capitalize every word in a title except the first word? And, if that first word is an article (part of speech), one does not alphabetize by it even though it is included?

As a professional editor I have to disagree with some of your thoughts. By capitalising every subject heading you are adding to the confusion about whether something is a proper noun or a trademark or merely a descriptor (and believe me the world of words and print is rife with that sort of confusion). Take carnival glass, for example, it's neither a trade name nor a proper noun, simply a descriptor that has become common parlance. A comprehensive subject index of the type you are creating (something I have experience of as part of a team writing and indexing an abstracts journal, and I applaud you for doing so) is in some ways akin to a dictionary, which sticks rigorously to the capitalisation rules to aid clarification. It is also not incorrect (at least in publishing) to capitalise every word except the first one in a title. It is incorrect to capitalise every word willy nilly. There are rules for "title case" and choosing to use it is a matter of style.

And if you alphabetised titles by including the first article (a, an and the are three examples), a and t would be extremely long, unwieldy and difficult to use. And it would also be difficult to apply because once you have sorted all the "thes", for example, you then have to alphabetise on the letters of the next word anyway.

One thing you do have to do is decide which are the important subjects in your index, what are the words people are going to look up. I have a cookery book that does not have crumble (it's a sort of pie topping, don't know if it's a US term and don't have time to look) in the index, nor is it under apple, crumble or rhubarb, crumble (the most common variants). It's under fruit, crumble. Not where I, as a cook, would expect it to be. Cross referencing is great though.

Good luck!  :fwr:

[Frank]

Apple Crumble (UK) = Apple Brown Betty (US)

[Ron]

I'm not a wordsmith, but I do look forward to seeing and using your index. My collection of GCD is in two boxes on a shelf. I know they would get much more use with a comprehensive way to find what I'm looking for. Good luck!