The Value of Indexing (2001) by Jan Sykes is a promotion piece for Factiva, a Dow Jones and Reuters Company, but is also a good overview of the value of indexing.
I find it interesting in its description of the use of a taxonomy for indexing purposes. You may remember from reading a print index the use of the term “see also.” This paper appears to argue that the indexing process consists of mapping one or more terms to a single term in the controlled vocabulary.
A single entry from the controlled vocabulary represents a particular concept no matter how it was referred to in the original article. (page 5)
I assume the mapping between the terms in the article and the term in the controlled vocabulary is documented. That mapping maybe of more interest to the professionals who create the indexes and power users than the typical user.
Perhaps that is a lesson in terms of what is presented to users of topic maps.
Delivery of the information a user wants/needs in their context is more important than demonstrating our cleverness.
That was one of the mistakes in promoting markup, too much emphasis on the cool, new, paradigm shifting and too little emphasis on the benefit to users. With office products that use markup in a non-visible manner to the average user, markup usage has spread rapidly around the world.
Suggestions on how to make that happen for topic maps?
PS: Obviously this is an old piece so in fairness I am contacting Factiva to advise them of this post and to ask if they have an updated paper, etc. that they might want me to post. I will take the opportunity to plug topic maps as well. 😉