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of a book or periodical, a list, nearly always alphabetical, of the topics treated. This list is usually at the back of a book, and the table of contents is in the front. The index seeks to direct the reader to all names and subjects on which the book has information. The subject, with the number of the page on which related information is to be found, is called the entry. In an index to a periodical the entries are less specific, referring usually to an article as a whole rather than to every subject touched upon in each article. Indexing requires experience and skill, since it is necessary not only to grasp the meaning of the author but to phrase that meaning clearly and in such a way as to place it alphabetically where the reader is likely to look first. Books written to give information are of little value unless properly indexed. Indexes to books were made long before the invention of printing. In the 16th cent. the term index began to be commonly applied to such a list; until the 17th cent. the index was rarely alphabetical. Diderot's famous EncyclopédieEncyclopédie
, the work of the French Encyclopedists, or philosophes. The full title was Encyclopédie; ou, Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts, et des métiers.
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 (1751–1772) had an alphabetical index. In 1848 in the United States a general index to the most widely circulated periodicals of the time was issued by William Frederick Poole. Poole's Index, later compiled cooperatively, continued until 1907, when it was superseded by the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. There are special indexes in various fields of knowledge, e.g., law, medicine, art, education, engineering, industrial arts, agriculture. Newspaper indexes include those to the London Times (from 1906) and the New York Times (from 1851). Indexes are increasingly being compiled by computer, and published as on-line databases and in CD-ROM format. The H. W. Wilson and R. R. Bowker companies are noted for special annual indexes, particularly the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, the Cumulative Book Index, and Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory. Indexes to illustrations, to artifacts, to formulas, and to various collections of materials are common. Some are alphabetical; others may be by number, color, or some other scheme. The catalogcatalog,
descriptive list, on cards or in a book, of the contents of a library. Assurbanipal's library at Nineveh was cataloged on shelves of slate. The first known subject catalog was compiled by Callimachus at the Alexandrian Library in the 3d cent. B.C.
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 of the books in a library is sometimes known as an index.


See M. D. Anderson, Book Indexing (1971); R. L. Collison, Indexes and Indexing (4th ed. 1972); J. Rowley, Abstracting and Indexing (2d ed. 1988); D. B. and A. D. Cleveland, Introduction to Indexing and Abstracting (2d ed. 1990).


in the Roman Catholic Church, list of publications forbidden to be read, called Index librorum prohibitorum [list of forbidden books]. This censorship was exercised by the Holy See. Catholics are forbidden, as a natural part of ethics, to read anything they know may endanger their faith or moral life; the Index was a partial guide to such literature. Since it was made up only from decisions referred for judgment on specific works, there was no consistency of inclusion; the failure of a book to appear in it implied nothing. The last edition of the Index was published in 1948. In 1966 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly, the Holy Office) announced that the Index and its related penalties of excommunication would no longer have the force of law in the church.



a list of common names, proper names, printed and written works, formulas and symbols, or other items; these items are arranged alphabetically according to subject, chronologically, or numerically. An index provides rapid access to information in a book, journal, or audiovisual source. In terms of content and intended use, there are two principal types of index: bibliographic and auxiliary.

The bibliographic index is a type of bibliographic aid whose entries are generally arranged in systematic order. An important reference source, the bibliographic index generally consists of two parts: a main index—the information file—and a supplementary index, which aids in the retrieval of information not revealed by the grouping of material in the main index. Abroad, main (subject) and supplementary (name) indexes are sometimes combined in an alphabetic, or dictionary, index.

The supplementary index is used as a guide to a given text. It contains a list of systematically arranged entries that name or designate items in the text, see and see also cross-references that link semantically similar but lexically different concepts, and references to page numbers, chapters, paragraphs, and bibliographic entries. An important element of the reference apparatus, the supplementary index is an efficient means of retrieving information and of reading selectively. The supplementary index also provides a concrete idea of the semantic structure of a given work. Supplementary indexes are used in scientific and scholarly publications, bibliographic aids, library catalogs, archive inventories, and collections of audiovisual materials.

There are several types of supplementary indexes. They differ according to content, that is, by using headings representing proper names (personal, geographic, and organizational); subjects; the names of published works or the first lines of poems; citations, abbreviations, symbols, and formulas. Thus, there are indexes of names, subject indexes, indexes of geographic names, and citation indexes. Supplementary indexes also differ according to the manner of grouping the material: there are alphabetic, thematic, classified, and chronological indexes.

The headings of an index may be simple, consisting of a word or phrase, or they may be complex, that is, they may consist of headings and subheadings. Indexes consisting only of simple headings are called blind indexes, and those consisting of complex and simple headings are called expanded, or analytic, indexes. When indexes provide additional information in the form of annotations, direct citations from the text, or definitions, they are called annotated indexes.

An index may be printed as part of a larger work, it may be published separately, or it may be printed on punched or un-punched cards. The type of index or system of indexes used depends on the type of publication, its subject matter, and the intended readership. The reference apparatus of the fifth edition of V. I. Lenin’s Complete Collected Works has an elaborate system of indexes.

With the development of computer technology in the mid-20th century, new types of indexes were used for the retrieval of information. These indexes were generally prepared with the aid of digital computers and were based on the principle of coordinate indexing; they included indexes of cited works, permutation indexes, and coordinate indexes.

Indexes of cited works (bibliographic references) are alphabetized lists of the surnames of authors with the names of their works that have been referred to in a given text. The references also provide brief information on publications in which the works of these authors are cited. A full description of these publications is given in a separate source index. Indexes of cited works are helpful in solving problems of science analysis and forecasting.

The permutation index is a type of auxiliary alphabetic subject index in which significant words in the titles of the indexed documents or in their abstracts function as subject headings. Each such word is entered sequentially in a retrieval column and separated by a space from the other words of the title or abstract that form the context of the subject heading. This type of index is also called an index of key words cited in context. Each entry in the permutation index has an identification number, a full description of which is found in the bibliographic section of the index. Other types of permutation indexes are the double permutation index, in which the key words are used as traditional subject headings; the index of key words cited out of context; and the quasipermutation index, which contains instead of titles sequences of descriptors from the retrieval patterns of documents.

The coordinate, or correlative, index facilitates the correlation of two or more terms that are not necessarily in alphabetical order (as in the subject index) or in a meaningful hierarchical order (as in the thematic index).


Mikhailov, A. I., and R. S. Giliarevskii. Istochniki, poisk i ispol’zovanie nauchnoi informatsii. Moscow, 1970.
Chernyi, A. I. Vvedenie v teoriiu informatsionnogo poiska. Moscow, 1975.
Prizment, E. L., and E. A. Dinershtein. Vspomogatel’nye ukazateli k nauchnoi knige. Moscow, 1975.
Collison, R. L. Indexes and Indexing, 3rd ed. London-New York, 1969.



(computer science)
A list of record surrogates arranged in order of some attribute expressible in machine-orderable form.
To produce a machine-orderable set of record surrogates, as in indexing a book.
To compute a machine location by indirection, as is done by index registers.
The portion of a computer instruction which indicates what index register (if any) is to be used to modify the address of an instruction.
Unity of a logarithmic scale, as the C scale of a slide rule.
A subscript or superscript used to indicate a specific element of a set or sequence.
The number above and to the left of a radical sign, indicating the root to be extracted.
For a subgroup of a finite group, the order of the group divided by the order of the subgroup.
For a continuous complex-valued function defined on a closed plane curve, the change in the amplitude of the function when traversing the curve in a counterclockwise direction, divided by 2π.
For a quadratic or Hermitian form, the number of terms with positive coefficients when the form is reduced by a linear transformation to a sum of squares or a sum of squares of absolute values.
For a symmetric or Hermitian matrix, the number of positive entries when the matrix is transformed to diagonal form.
A numerical quantity, usually dimensionless, denoting the magnitude of some physical effect, such as the refractive index.


1. Maths
a. another name for exponent
b. a number or variable placed as a superscript to the left of a radical sign indicating by its value the root to be extracted, as in 3&#221A8 = 2
c. a subscript or superscript to the right of a variable to express a set of variables, as in using xi for x1, x2, x3, etc
2. a number or ratio indicating a specific characteristic, property, etc.


(Plural "indices" or "indexes")

1. <programming> A number used to select an element of a list, vector, array or other sequence. Such indices are nearly always non-negative integers but see associative array.

2. <database> See inverted index. 3. <World-Wide Web> A search engine.

4. <World-Wide Web> A subject index.


(1) See indexed color.

(2) A common method for keeping track of data so that it can be accessed quickly. Like an index in a book, it is a list in which each entry contains the name of the item and its location. However, computer-based indexes may point to a physical location on a disk or to a logical location that points elsewhere to the actual location.

Indexes are used by all types of software, including the operating system, database management system (DBMS) and applications. For example, the file system index in an operating system contains an entry for each file name and the starting location of the file on disk. A database index has an entry for each key field (account number, name, etc.) and the location of the record. Search engines use a very sophisticated indexing system to keep track of billions of pages on the Web.

(3) In programming, a method for accessing data in a table. See subscript and inverted file.

Types of Indexes
Indexes are widely used to keep track of the physical location of files on the disk as well as the logical location of data within a database. On the other hand, a programming index is a counter that is incremented to point to a relative location in a table.
References in periodicals archive ?
MISSOURI Alberta Smith, RMA, AHI, 1997 Ridgeway, Arnold, MO 63010, email: smithfam1997@sbcglobal.
Individuals with AHI in Malawi had more positive attitudes to abstinence than those in South Africa, but believed that intensive counselling and support would be required.
Compared with patients with an AHI of 0-5, patients with severe OSAH were 6.
1) Offerings at the Social include, clockwise from left, pepper-encrusted ahi tuna, filet mignon and bacon-wrapped scallops.
I chose ahi tuna salad because it's a quick, fairly light dish," Peterson said.
The traditional business at AHI was correspondence courses, a sort of MBA by mail," Goodloe said.
Chemetron Corporation, an inactive subsidiary of AHI, made the sprinklers from 1977 through 1982.
In affected patients, the AHI has been reported to vary across successive nights.
The remaining 50 percent of AHI stock is owned by an entity comprised of physician groups.
Because of the high success rate, major insurers pay AHI based on results of treatments, a revolutionary approach to traditional healthcare.
New York (AirGuideBusiness - Business & Industry News) Tue, Mar 4, 2014 - Airbus Helicopters named Precision Aviation Services (PAS), a Precision Aviation Group (PAG) company, as an AHI Service Center.
Based on Aquion s innovation AHI battery technology, the AE12 battery module is an 18 kilowatt hour system that offers long-duration daily cycling for microgrid and grid applications.