[Sca-cooks] Indexing was To Milk an Almond: Index? Database?

Johnna Holloway johnnae at mac.com
Sat Jul 9 05:58:49 PDT 2011


 From the outside, indexing always looks easy, however
it's neither easy nor is it a snap in terms of time and effort.
I see several problems with attempting to group index even one  
specific work.
One problem with group indexing is that each person could
approach indexing the recipes in a slightly different manner and that  
would
create chaos in the editing and possibly in the finished product.  
Apple or apples?
Fruit- Apples? Pies? Pie? Tart? tarts? Pies, apple? Pies-apple?
(This is all part of an arcane art called Vocabulary Control.  
Librarians used to take
courses in it.)
Just to start, which style of indexing will be
used? Will all contributors adhere to it? Consistency across any index  
is the key; can
one maintain that consistency when the contributors come from  
different backgrounds
and are approaching the project in spare moments?
(Nancy Humphreys helpfully discusses styles here:
http://www.wordmapsindexing.com/old-wmaps/cookbooks.shtml )

One option that I see here is that since _To Milk and Almond_ will be  
online is that one
should be able to use either the "FIND" function and search for  
ingredients or keywords in that fashion
or download the PDF and search using the "SEARCH" function there.

What could be done is to add additional information to each recipe in  
the document as needed and place those
revised sections up in place of the original sections online.
One could add certain terms  or descriptions as:
Suitable for Potluck; Suitable for Large Feasts; Recommended for Small  
Feasts: Gluten-Free;
Suitable for Low Salt Diets; Not suitable for humid conditions, Slow- 
Cooker, etc.
If you added such terms to each recipe as needed, then readers ought  
to be able to find those
terms when doing a search. Also having such descriptions attached to  
each recipe would be helpful
for those readers just browsing through the collection and might  
inspire more cookery.

Johnnae

On Jul 9, 2011, at 5:01 AM, David Friedman wrote: about possibly  
indexing  our recipe collection. _To Milk an Almond
snipped The old fashioned solution is to  index it, so that one could  
look up all recipes with pork and get a list of page numbers. snipped
> Thoughts? Would it be a project worth doing? Volunteers?



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