INTRODUCTION: THE FREELANCE INDEXER
Being the freelancer that I am, the prospect of an ongoing project that would provide some guaranteed income for a year and a half was irresistible. Indexing is the kind of work that you either love or hate. You need to have the right mind for it. Most librarians do have the right temperament for this sort of work and we all appreciate how useful an index is. However, not everyone would want to take on 36 volumes of the minutes of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple's Executive Committee (1956–2006)!
Kate Faulkner and the minute books!
The Executive Committee for Inner Temple is comparable to the board of directors of a company, and their minutes cover all the day-to-day business of the Inn. But of course the Inns of Court are quite unique institutions, steeped in history and tradition, but still very active in the modern age. Chambers, for example, have always been used as offices as well as residences, and this remains true today. I had already indexed a volume for Inner Temple covering 1836–1845; so I hoped that this project would use some of the information I had learnt previously.
As a freelancer, quoting for such a big job is also difficult. You can roughly calculate how long it will take to work through the volumes the first time round and to type up a draft index, but it is the ‘query and checking’ stage that is unquantifiable. You can fiddle and double-check things for evermore, or you can stop checking too soon and not find a glaring error. I was fortunate that the Archivist at Inner Temple was happy for me to take my time with the project and fit it in alongside my other book-indexing work.
As I live in Cambridgeshire and am unable to get into London every week to access the volumes, it was kindly arranged for them to be stored at the Squire Law Library at the University of Cambridge, so that I could work on them there. I was concerned about the minutes being located offsite for two years and, therefore, it would be inconvenient for Inner Temple. If the volumes were needed during that time it would also be frustrating for the Archivist. Worse still, if the volumes were not needed during that time, why pay me to index them at all?! I have had about ten enquiries over the past year which proved very beneficial. They took time away from the indexing, but gave me an insight into how the index would ultimately be used. Some of the answers to the enquiries could be found through the index, but some could not. But the failures turned out not to be the fault of the index, as the information sought was not included in the minutes anyway.
Of course, being a Librarian, I found it very frustrating when the topic being looked for was not there, and couldn't stop myself searching on the internet to try to find some kind of answer for the enquirer. At times I wondered if being a librarian was a hindrance because I have wanted to index EVERYTHING. I know how frustrating it is to not be able to find answers.
PREPARING THE INDEX
On a project like this there is always the issue of how to balance the desire to index absolutely everything with how much time and money it will cost in relation to how much use the final product would receive. I am sure one could spend 5 years and £20,000 reading and re-reading and indexing every single choirboy, chambers renovation and apology for absence. But will it ever get £20,000 worth of use? Will it be scanned and OCR-ed at some point soon anyway? Early decisions have to be made regarding how extensively to index, but, in the final analysis, what is the point of storing material if you can't access the information in it?
Information professionals know that even when something is digitised, full text searching is not the same as having a good index, which pulls concepts together, controls terminology, and provides cross-references for the reader. A clear example is hereditary titles and allied name changes which I will discuss later.
The absolute essential in preparing any sort of index is to keep constantly in mind the question of who is going to use it, and what kind of information they will be after. The prime users of this index will be internal to the Temple - archivists and librarians, but also other officers and members. However, not all enquiries will be generated internally. They may well come from outside – from historians, biographers, genealogists, ex-members of staff, and so on.
There are some unique issues associated with dealing with committee minutes. They are already a form of summary. Each numbered minute was on a particular point, often with a clear subheading. However, what I soon learned was that what a discussion was originally called in the minutes was not usually what it ended up being known as. In other words, the terminology is often inconsistent. In addition, the person taking the minutes (and there will have been several over the years) will not have had the interests of a future indexer in mind. For example, in volume 36 (2006) at every meeting there is a discussion sub-headed “2008 committee”. This was the committee organising the 400th anniversary celebrations of when the Inn received its Royal Charter. The best place to put the entry would be Royal Charter, subheading 400thanniversary celebrations, probably with a see cross-reference from 2008 Committee (which of course, being a number would be filed right at the beginning of the index).
ACCURACY
I fret regularly about the accuracy of the index. The minuter would not have dreamt of inaccurately spelling the name of a senior QC or Master of the Bench but there is less care over staff of the Inn. Various porters and kitchen staff have different spellings of surnames and first initials and, of course, there is the perennial problem of women marrying and changing their surnames. It is not usually possible to find these ‘normal’ people on the internet to confirm spellings so we have to check other documents of the Inn, but their descendants are just as likely to contact the archives to research their family history as more ‘prominent’ people. We all expect an index to be accurate, rightly so, but at the end of the day I often only have the information in front of me. If it is a simple matter of spelling all I can do is put down both possibilities in the index so the reader will realise there was an inconsistency – e.g. Smith/Smythe, John.
However, coping with the changing names of senior members of the Inn is another matter entirely. An individual can start off as Fred Blogs but then become Fred Bloggs QC, Master Bloggs, Honourable Lord Justice Bloggs, Lord Bloggs of Ely, etcFootnote 1. It wasn't until half way through the project that I realised that Master Eve and Master Silsoe were the same person. (Master Eve became Baron Silsoe in 1976 when his father died and he inherited the title). Once I knew this, a simple see also would suffice, but this is an example of something that a person using free text searching would not discover. I have invented a new verb, Who's Who-ing! Hours are spent using an electronic version of Who's Who to check spellings and find the first names of the Masters of the Bench – not to mention the joys of unravelling the sons and grandsons of families of barristers.
DESIGN, LAYOUT AND SUBHEADINGS
In this type of project, the indexer is often far more involved with questions of design and layout than is usually the case. When an indexing job comes from a commercial publisher one is normally given a style guide or at least some basic parameters, and usually there is a maximum length. The indexer only has to return a Word, or rtf, file with the index in it and the typesetters do the rest. When undertaking an assignment of this sort, however, you have to consider how the index will be formatted because it affects how the indexing is done.
A good example of the decisions to be made is run-on subheadings or set out subheadings. Run-on subheadings are used when there will be a shortage of space. However, they are not very user friendly and it means you cannot have sub-subheadings. Set-out/indented subheadings are much easier to navigate but take up much more space. Set-out subheadings are certainly better when the index will be produced in two or three columns. The length and phrasing of the subheadings is even affected by whether they will be run-on or indented.
The addition of any type of subheading does take up time, but a string of page numbers without subheadings is horrible to read and use. I have heard other indexers say that they use the rule of thumb that with more than 6 (some say 10) locators, the string needs to be broken into subheadings. This is a good rule but an added frustration is how often a page locator needs to go under more than one subheading.
What is even more unique about this project is the inclusion of the date with each locator, so entries look like this:
Investment Committee/Sub-Committee
1 Nov 2001 29/10,419
6 Apr 2005 35/12,930
annual reports
11 Nov 1980 3/805
10 Nov 1981 4/905
8 Nov 1982 4/1075
14 Oct 2003 33/11,897
Nov 2004 34/12,739
constitution
……………
This meant that run-on subheadings and locators would not have been a sensible way forward. It would have looked like this:
Investment Committee/Sub-Committee: 1 Nov 2001, 29/10,419; 6 Apr 2005, 35/12,930; annual reports: 11 Nov 1980, 3/805; 10 Nov 1981, 4/905; 8 Nov 1982, 4/1075; 14 Oct 2003, 33/11,897; Nov 2004, 34/12,739; constitution ……………….
In effect each date is a set-out, subheading and does provide a chronological context, but I decided that if an entry has more than 10 locators it will be split up further. At the end of this project it may well be my job to format the index into columns and consider page-breaks and run-ons.
Much of this deliberation is geared towards the printed index - bound up to sit comfortably on the shelf alongside the volumes themselves, but in the future the index may increasingly be used in electronic form.
There are also problems caused by the sheer size of the index. As it grew larger (currently 395 pages long) I had to begin to use 'control F' to navigate through it, and had to remember to use more sophisticated searching than is usual in Microsoft Word. I got very frustrated whenever Master Sumption was mentioned because every time I searched for sumpt I got the entry for ‘gas consumption'. I later realised Master Sumption is now in the Supreme Court and deserves a little more respect! Searching May for Master May brought up every entry for May unless I remembered to search for May, . Every time I searched for Master Rix (also a senior judge) and put in rix I got Queen Beatrix.
STORIES
When reading real life minutia of day to day activity for months you can get very attached to the “characters”. I came to know which person would speak on particular matters or who loves being on committees, who's new and gets the job of being Master of the Car Park. Worryingly I even get tearful when sometimes they die. Often they forget to tell me! Usually it isn't mentioned in the minutes, until they're discussing whether to erect a memorial bench or start up a scholarship fund in their name.
It is lovely to see how the Inn has taken care of its staff in the past. The committee reports on how someone is doing after an operation, arranges bonuses for people who have worked hard during times of departmental upheaval, discusses the tax position of the staff Christmas fund. In the 1960s they even attempt to insure their manuscript cataloguer because it was so hard to find a suitable scholar to undertake the project and they were concerned he might keel over in the middle of the project.
Sometimes there is drama – the use of DNA testing to track down a bicycle thief. Politics – the debate over whether to reinstate the membership of the late Mahatma Ghandi. A certain Cambridge College had a stash of books so long that there were discussions about whether they would ever get them back or if it was best to just let them keep them. There are permissions for people to get married in Temple Church and every now and then there's a lunch for them to all get together. Thank heavens (pun intended) for The Da Vinci Code (snippets were filmed on the premises) as it paid for new guttering on Temple Church.
SUBJECTIVE INDEXING
I do worry about unwittingly creating bias in an index. Indexing is surprisingly subjective. All trained information professionals should know what to include but it's how we do that can become subjective. This problem is not specific to this project but there is a danger that one is always more likely to index an event or a scandal where someone is in trouble but less likely to index little mentions of “thanks for doing a good job on the so and so report, Master Bloggs”. I am left with the nagging concern (because I am a librarian) that I have indexed every little event with the library (new chairs being purchased, new photocopiers, theft of books) but not so much with the catering department!
An extra peculiarity on this project is that I am continuing on from two previous indexes. The original index, developed over time by the archivists was in a Kalamazoo volumeFootnote 2. Then, another indexer had indexed the first 4 volumes before he fell ill. The older index covers topics the archivists needed to look up – so, mainly events and decisions. But the more time that passes, the more queries are about people for biographers and family historians. The human interest angle is now just as relevant. For example, they had not indexed an entry for when the City of London school requested that they could use the Temple Gardens as a playground for lunchtime break for two years in the early 1980s while their new building was being constructed. To me this is fascinating (even though they said ‘no’).
The social and historical context is enjoyable, there is actually an entry in the 1960s discussing whether the Inn should employ more female servants as they are cheaper. The introduction of photocopiers, computers, CCTV and websites was all documented. The Queen's coronation and jubilees are celebrated. The Inn's role in supporting local and national charities is heart-warming. Their desire to maintain the scholarship funds and to see the right candidates have access to the profession really comes across in the minutes. Their role in educating and supporting young barristers is often apparent in the background.
On the other hand there is a recurring battle to try to prevent the installation of a helipad on the Embankment. Discussions over whether to put a tennis court on the gardens. And lots of buying and refurbishing of multi-million pound properties to maintain the Inn's grasp. The relations with other Inns and institutions is also fascinating.
FINAL REMARKS
I have thoroughly enjoyed this project but will be equally pleased to see it finished with the index in use. I would like to thank the Squire Law Library staff for allowing me to occupy two shelves and a desk over the past eighteen months and for making me feel welcome. Finally, it is not often after a year and a half that you realise you have been indexing one of the chaps that has been bustling in and out of the library office looking for the day's copy of The Times…!
