Wikidata:Property proposal/indexer

‎indexer

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Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Creative work

   Done: indexer (P12895) (Talk and documentation)
Descriptionentity responsible for compiling an index of a book, database, website or other forms of media publications in the form of a methodical arrangement of records designed to enable users to locate information quickly. Example: Hazel K. Bell (Q70226489)
Representsindexer (Q60461966)
Data typeItem
Domainwork (Q386724)
Example 1Seven Pillars of Wisdom (Q24323)Hazel K. Bell (Q70226489) - ‘Indexing T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)': https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/index.2023.35
Example 2The Indexing Companion (Q127112266)Glenda Browne (Q113860450) - https://www.librarything.com/author/browneglenda
Example 3Archaeology in Western Samoa (Q115027564)Dorothy Brown (Q126453091) - Pg 1 of Book (Pg 3 of PDF) https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/281386#page/1/mode/1up
Example 4The familiar letters of James Howell (Q127112937)Joseph Jacobs (Q981949) - https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/18752301
Example 5North of England mining accident victims (Q127110815) → George Bell - https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/8137200
SourceFurther reading about the indexing profession:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-28/index-history-invention-made-simultaneously-800-years-ago/100690782

https://www.penguin.com.au/books/index-a-history-of-the-9780141989662

https://glog.glennf.com/tiny-type-blog/2022/2/22/indexing-a-podcast-about-duncan-dennis-paula-clarke-bain

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/15/books/review/index-a-history-of-the-dennis-duncan.html
Planned usecrediting current and historical indexers of published works
Expected completenessalways incomplete (Q21873886)
See alsoauthor (P50), editor (P98), illustrator (P110), colorist (P6338), letterer (P9191), penciller (P10837), inker (P10836) & annotator (P11105)
Wikidata projectWikiProject Library and Information Science (Q125310122)

Motivation

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This role is recognised by the Association of College and Research Libraries (Q4809736) (Link to the RBMS Relationship Designators vocabulary entry for 'indexer', at the Library of Congress (Q131454) website: https://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/rbmsrel/rel00118.html )

Attribution Gap - An Index is part of a book’s 'content'. As such 'indexers' are not the same as 'editors', but create intellectual content. This is why it would be inapproriate to use author (P50), & editor (P98), for crediting indexers, and an independent property would be more suitable. The property proposal and description is broad enough to include fiction & non-fiction indexers, website indexers, database indexers, map indexers, authors who index themselves, and/or AI that get credited as indexers.

There are also notable professional indexers, who can be created as 'independent items' and linked to the published works they have indexed throughout their career. However, no clear property exists to help facilitate this credit link at the moment.

Over the last few years, alongside author (P50), & editor (P98), the Wikidata community has approved highly niche and specific properties for illustrator (P110), colorist (P6338), letterer (P9191), penciller (P10837), inker (P10836) & annotator (P11105), so there is warrant to have "indexer" in its own right.

Gender Gap - To support the continued & future work of the WikiProject Library and Information Science (Q125310122), of adding metadata for all those contributing to publishing. Indexing as a field, alongside other GLAM (Q1030034) occupations have been performed by majority women, both presently and historically. Having a property for indexers would enable us to show the contributions of women in published media more accurately and fill the gender gap (Q1501337), especially the gender gap on WikiProjects (gender bias on Wikipedia (Q17002416)). Wallacegromit1 (talk) 10:46, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

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