Index, a History of the (Duncan)

  • Dennis Duncan
  • 344pp highlighting up to 111, notes to 59

Indexes and related topics

Index, a History of the (Duncan) / Google **
  • Our Google searches search an index Google has created of the web. (1) Google
Index, a History of the (Duncan) / Indexes **
  • Indexes have to do with the relation of time and knowledge - how to speed up access, and how to turn book contents into "extractible units of knowledge" (2)
  • An index is a timesaver, telling us where to look
  • Indexes indicate - where things are
  • Indexes are ordered alphabetically
  • Indexes don't work for scrolls. They needed the codex to become practical (6)
  • Indexes are not text-oriented but reader-oriented, helping readers find something they want to find in the text (6)
  • Indexes are an 'add-on' to speed up 'extract reading'. (7)
  • Duncan says indexes is the plural, whereas indices are for math and economics. (7)
  • Since indexes rely on page numbers, they are meaningless when there are multiple editions of a work - teacher tells her students to turn to page x
  • The concern that Google's index will make us stupid has been around since the index was invented. The practice of reading changes to adapt to new contexts. (9-10)
  • Control F to search any page
  • Two types: Subject indexes vs word indexes or concordances
  • * The first indexes were invented in two places - Oxford (Robert Grosseteste and Paris (Hugh of St. Cher) - almost simultaneously, in or around 1230. Arose because of the birth of the first universities, with the need of teachers and students to access info quicker, and also the rise of the Dominicans and Franciscans, created to preach to the wider populace. (50ff)
Index, a History of the (Duncan) / Tables of Contents **
  • Tables of contents follow the order of a work and show us the structure and flow.
  • Tables of contents have existed since classical times eg Pliny the Elder (5)
Index, a History of the (Duncan) / Concordances **
  • Concordances are a subcategory of indexes (9), an index of words (10)
  • Were specialist tools until computers made them prominent (10) # Concordances
Index, a History of the (Duncan) / Alphabetization **
  • The alphabet is a leveler, it makes people and topics equal. It doesn't work well for things like art shows where pieces can play off of each other. (22)
  • Some fear that alphabetizing was an admission that there is no order. Yet the same people used alphabetizing in other contexts. (25)
  • Alphabetizing is instinctive, and we don't explicitly learn to use things like dictionaries. Anyone who is even barely literate can understand it. (25-26)
  • Alphabetizing has been around since at least the middle of the second millennium BCE (27)
  • Alphabetical acrostics in the Bible: Prov 31, Pss 25, 34, 37, 111, 112, 119, 145; four of the five chs of Lamentations (29)
  • Library of Alexandria and the need to organize vast numbers of scrolls (30). Organized first by genre, then alphabetically within genres. See p 32 for what the tablet entries contained.
  • Sillybos (syllabus) - parchment tags to identy scrolls (32)
  • Ancient Romans not as impressed with alphabetization as th)e Greeks were (35)
  • But the Romans used alphabetization for works that dealt with words as words: glossaries and lexicons. (38)
  • # Alphabetization Library of Alexandria Acrostics in the Bible Etymology / Syllabus Scrolls

People

Index, a History of the (Duncan) / Robert Grosseteste **
  • See p 50 for the many amazing accomplishments of Robert Grosseteste, including his gigantic Tabula.
Index, a History of the (Duncan) / Hugh of St. Cher **
  • Tomasso da Modena's painting of Hugh of St. Cher show him with glasses, but he lived just before the invention of spectacles. (52)
  • Created a concordance of the Bible and wrote Bible commentaries. (54)

The activity of reading

Index, a History of the (Duncan) / Slow reading in monasteries **
  • Monasteries made reading the center of life (57)
  • Digesting, chewing and reuminating metaphor (57)
  • Monks read slowly and meditatively, compared to our rushed reading 'as we are able' (57) The activity of reading
Index, a History of the (Duncan) / Reading aloud **
  • Ancient reading was about hearing the words from your mouth, muscle memory, fingers and eyes tracing the page. (58)
  • Augustine and Ambrose anecdote (58) The activity of reading

Miscellaneous

Index, a History of the (Duncan) / Stories and humor **
  • John Marbeck saved from execution when he indexed in prison (11)
  • Round's index criticizing Edward Freeman's intellectual sins (14)
  • Henry Rhodes Hamilton's megalomaniacal index about himself (19)