Colleen Dunham Indexing

“Carlos Fuentes has died to be loved even more

Colleen — Wed, 16 May 2012 20:48:01 +0000

May he rest in peace.”

Those were the words of Mexican President Felipe Calderon at the ceremony following Carlos Fuentes’s death yesterday at age 83. A major player in Latin American literature, Fuentes wrote prolifically. USAToday said, “He remained a workhorse until the end, keeping a disciplined writing routine that allowed him to finish novel after novel, with time left over to weigh in on current affairs.”

My personal Fuentes favorite is, of course, This I Believe: An A to Z of a Life. He described it as the various kinds of love contained in his personal alphabet. It starts at Amore and ends at Zurich.

Some people just want to make the world a little better

Colleen — Tue, 15 May 2012 22:18:20 +0000

Take Laura Dodd, for example. ”This book was lacking an index, so I prepared one for practice,” says Laura. She did it pro bono. You can download it for free here.

The author, Amy Stewart, explains, “There was some kind of glitch in the book production system … The index never got ordered. By the time I realized that there was no index forthcoming, it was too late to do anything about it. And there was no way to add it later without having to repaginate the book and possibly raise the price … But then something extraordinary happened. A professional indexer walked into my bookstore one day and handed me a complete, extremely detailed, beautifully formatted index.”

Amy Stewart’s Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities is available at Amazon.

Twenty books in 20 minutes

Colleen — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 01:24:56 +0000

Wishing I had more.

Say it softly …

Colleen — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:27:58 +0000

The celebration designed to spread a love of reading

Colleen — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 18:38:18 +0000

Here’s the cover of the special edition of Sherman’s book for World Book Night. I am so psyched to have 20 copies to give away.

A story implied

Colleen — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 03:35:11 +0000

J.G. Ballard, who liked to play around with unconventional literary structures, wrote a story in the form of an index.

In War Fever, “The Index” is an alphabetical list of people, places, and concepts for the autobiography of HRH (Henry Rhodes Hamilton), an autobiography that no longer exists. Thus, the index is the whole story. Everything we want to know about HRH must be pieced together from the index entries. For example:

Cambodia, HRH plans journey to, 188; crashes aircraft, 196; writes book about, 235; meetings with Malraux, 239; capture by insurgents, 253; escape, 261; writes second book about, 283

Fermi, Enrico, reveals first controlled fission reaction to HRH, 299; terminal cancer diagnosed by HRH, 388; funeral eulogy read by HRH, 401

Oswald, Lee Harvey, befriended by HRH, 350; inspired by HRH, 354; discusses failure of the Presidency with HRH, 357–61; invites HRH to Dallas, 372

Wight, Isle of, incarceration of HRH, 712–69

On vacation until April 12

Colleen — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 00:58:00 +0000

From March 12 until April 12, I will be out of the country with limited access to phone and e-mail. During that time please get in touch with Lisa DeBoer at deboer18@gmail.com. She will be minding the shop for Colleen Dunham Indexing and will be able to track me down if necessary.

U.S. Patent Application 20050044529

Colleen — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 14:00:16 +0000

“Links referencing the task data from the plurality of components are generated according to a predetermined schema, such as predefined categories or subjects, or alphabetically by subject matter. The task data and the task links are stored as the task library.”

(The invention was an index.)

Books as bricks

Colleen — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 23:18:17 +0000

So appropriate as a reference desk. The designers say all it takes is a little heavy duty paper cement. Read more here.

Indexing in the Early Days: Part III

Colleen — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 19:39:38 +0000

Although our electronic tools might have been lacking, our other tools were so fine.

This one is called a cradle. A cradle is what cradled the precious index cards. There was a corrugated rubber bottom on the inside to prevent things from getting sloppy. With a cradle and some well-fitted rubber fingers, who needed a laptop?

RUBBER FINGERS