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Back to Fall 2005 Conference program page
Fall 2005 Conference Presentation
Web Site Indexing: Techniques and Issues
Presented by Heather Hedden
As an instructor of web site indexing and leader of ASI’s Web Indexing Special Interest Group, Heather Hedden brought a wealth of knowledge on the subject to the fall conference. There are different types of web indexes besides the typical A-Z index one might find on a general web site or intranet. Other types include those for online periodicals and e-zines, meta tagged indexes for web pages, collections of multiple web sites, and any HTML documents. Web indexes can be extremely important to certain types of sites, and should not be confused with site maps or search functions. Site maps can be useful for navigation of a site, but not always for finding information. Search engines alone can come up short because of differences in language and wording, and they often leave users thinking that information isn’t there, when if fact it is… they just used the wrong words to search.
A web site index, which often looks like a back-of-the-book index, is different in that the entries are not followed by locators, but instead are hyperlinked, so the user merely clicks on the entry to be taken to the appropriate page. Web site indexes are useful mainly for sites which are of medium size, and which don’t have a high level of change to the material on the site (Ebay, for example, would be a nightmare to index). Repeat visitors and a lot of indexable content are other characteristics which make a site a good candidate for the addition of an index. Academic institutions, libraries, and professional organizations are just a few categories of web sites which may benefit by the presence of an index.
After explaining both the advantages of web indexes, as well as their limitations, Heather gave examples of some which she considers to be useful, Gleason Public Library, Consumer Reports, and STC Boston. With the entire Gleason library web site on her laptop, she then demonstrated the functionality of the index, by soliciting search topic suggestions from the audience. Indeed the topics were found to be entries in the index, and they successfully retrieved the desired web pages.
Then came an overview of the different ways in which one can create web indexes, from the most basic choice of hand coding all of the HTML and creating the index in an HTML editing program, to the different tools and programs available specifically for web index creation. Tools to create web site indexes include the indexing features of help authoring tools (RoboHelp, MS HTML Help, and FAR HTML), the program HTML/Prep, from Leverage Technologies, which converts an index that as already been created using dedicated indexing software, stand-alone web indexing programs XRefHT32 (from Tim Craven Freeware) and HTML Indexer (from Brown Inc.). Heather gave brief demonstrations of the user interfaces of both of these programs.
The question of how to obtain the web site files was brought up, which introduced two programs from Blue Squirrel Software (WebWhacker and Grab-a-Site), which can be used to extract file data from a site. Heather emphasized, however, that the most reliable way to obtain files for creating an index is to get them directly from the client on disk.
Obtaining clients, or rather convincing potential clients that they need our services is, of course, an important issue. The challenge of getting initial work, possibly on a pro bono basis for experience and exposure, was discussed. Also, ideas for locating repeat work, dealing with the need to update indexes produced for past clients, and just the need to raise awareness of the usefulness and need for web indexes were also covered in this very informative and interesting presentation.
Resources on Web Indexing Handout
Heather Hedden, currently vice-president and president-elect of NEASI, is a freelance indexer with her business Hedden Information Management. Until early 2004 she was senior vocabulary editor with Thomson Gale, a publisher of periodical and reference index databases for libraries, and was previously a database indexer with Gale's predecessor Information Access Company. Heather currently leads the Web Indexing SIG of ASI after reactivating it at the start of 2005. She provides online training in web site indexing, and starting in February 2006 she will be teaching an online workshop through Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science Continuing Education program.
E-mail: heather@hedden.net