Qualitizing the Oral History Works -3

Index

Mahia Hafizi
Translated by: Zahra Hosseinian

2023-11-13

In order to understand more about how to improve the quality of book production on the subject of oral history or memoirs, the oral history website has conducted short interviews with some pundits and authorities, the results of which will be presented to the audients in the form of short notes and in several episodes.

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INDEX

One of the requirements that should be paid special attention to in oral history books is “Index”. The index is dividing the content of the book by genre. It means that the content of the book should be divided into different categories and brought again at the end of the book.

When researchers look for a specific subject in books, they will not be able to read all those books wholly; because both the number of sources is large and the amount of science production is fast and abundant; therefore, it is not possible to read all the books, nor is it logical. At this point, the researchers refer to the index of books to find the desired subject.

The subject and the content of the book determine the type and number of index categories. The more diverse the categories considered for the index, the easier it will be for the researcher to find the subject they look for. Some of these categories are common to all books, such as list of people and places. But based on the subject of the book, other categories can be added.

If the subject of the book is about the holy defence oral history, for instance, indexes such as the list of operations, weapons, martyrs, war prisoners, etc. can be added to the index. If the subject of the book is about the revolution oral history, another list including names of martyrs, names of oppressors, names of prisons, important places, demonstrations, etc. will be annexed to the index. Or in case of talking about different universities in book, a list of the names of these universities can be added to the index.

A list of photos, documents, etc. Is another type of index. Assuming that there are many photos and documents in a book, if there is an index for them, the audience can quickly find the desired ones.

There are no limits for the book index. Even as many pages as the book, index pages can be created. That is, the entire content is analysed once again and categorized into appropriate lists. This will greatly help researchers to access the materials as quickly as possible. In some books, they go even further and enter an important sentence related to each index next to it, in addition to creating a list of indices. Preparing the index is very important and it is one of the main duties of an author; but unfortunately, it is done by an unaware person or by a system in most cases, while the list of indices should be extracted by the author, who has complete knowledge of the text and subject of the book, in order the index has maximum efficiency.