User Preferences for Features in Back of Book Indexes

A survey of 255 librarians and college professors obtained their opinions of three elements of back of book indexes. Both groups overwhelmingly preferred line‐by‐line subheadings to the run‐on arrangement, even though many books use the latter format. Almost all librarians preferred word‐by‐word alphabetization to the letter‐by‐letter method, but only about two thirds of the professors shared this preference. Strongest disagreement between the two groups occurred when most of the librarians preferred see references to duplicate entries, while most professors selected duplicate entries instead of see references. Indexers and developers of indexing standards should consider the preferences of index users. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.