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Index, in the Roman Catholic Church

Index, 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.

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index, in publishing

index, 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 Encyclopédie (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 Poole's Index, later compiled cooperatively, continued until 1907, when it was superseded by the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature.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 catalog of the books in a library is sometimes known as an index.

Bibliography

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).

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(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, inverted file and color palette.

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.

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index - (Plural "indices" or "indexes") 1. 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. See inverted index. 3. A search engine. 4. A subject index.