The Tao Of Topic Maps / quote 10 of 27
Books need indexes as travellers need maps
Someone once said that “a book without an index is like a country without a map”. However interesting and worthwhile the experience of driving from A to B without a map might be in its own right, there can be no doubt that when the goal is to arrive at one's destination as quickly as possible (or at least without undue delay), some kind of a map is indispensable. Similarly, if you are looking for a particular piece of information in a book (as opposed to enjoying the experience of reading it from cover to cover), a good index is an immense asset. The traditional back-of-book index can be likened to a carefully researched and hand-crafted map, and the task of the indexer, as Larry Bonura puts it [Bonura 1994], “to chart[ing] the topics of the document and [presenting] a concise and accurate map for readers.”