Web Indexing Awards

Web Indexing Awards - 2009 Feedback

To encourage high quality web site indexes and to promote the web indexing work of professional indexers, the Web Indexing Special Interest Group of the American Society for Indexing awards a deserving indexer the annual Web Indexing SIG Award for excellence in web site indexing.

The 2009 winner was Mary Russell, Australia, for the index to the Australian and New Zealand Society of Indexers (ANZSI) web site (the index is available at the bottom of each page).

Selected Comments

Please note that some of these comments may no longer be valid due to changes implemented on the live version of the index.

Usability

"The index is quite usable. Desired information can be found. As it is a long index, breaking it up for a page for each letter of the alphabet makes sense. It is nice to have the navigation letters on the bottom of every page of the web site, making the index very accessible. On the index pages themselves, however, it would be better to have the navigation letters at both the top and bottom of the page."

"The "A B C" line at the bottom of the index pages was handy -- but I kept looking for it at the top of the page! Nice to see the "A B C" index line on the home page!"

"Where there are pages that list articles, reports, or conference papers, for which the pdf files are also available on the web site, the index entries point only the the citation pages (such as www.anzsi.org/site/electronic.asp) , rather than to the pdf documents themselves. The index user then has to skim through the list of documents to find the desired one and then click on it. It would save time if the index entries would link directly to the pdf pages. (In such cases, the index entries should by marked either with pdf in parenthases or have a small graphic icon for Adobe Acrobat, as is used in the web pages listing the documents.)"

"The two level index (main headings and subheadings) with the headings hypertext linked was easy to navigate and use."

"The usability of the index could be improved by indicating hyperlinks. The HTML default of underlined blue is not used. It wasn't obvious whether a main heading that also had subheadings was hypertext linked."

A "usability test" was conducted by selecting information from the web site to look up in the index. The following list of information or terms were identified in the website content and sought via the index:

"branches and groups" -- found "branches"; nothing under "groups"; not double-posted or cross-referenced under "chapters" (which would be the North American term)
"Tasmanian branch" -- found
"news" -- found
"contacts" -- found
"ANZSI Council" -- found
"addresses" -- not found under "addresses" but is under "contacts"
"membership application" -- not found under "membership" or "applications"
"joining" -- not found under "joining" but was found under "membership"
"newsletter" -- found under "newsletter" and "ANZSI" newsletter
"conferences" -- found
"software" -- found
"indexing software" and "web indexing software" -- both found
"thesaurus (general info; software; standards)" -- all thesaurus-related info found
"standards" -- found
"metadata" -- found
"distance learning" -- found

Summary of the usability test: 15 of the 16 items of information were found somehow through the index. 4 of the 16 items would have benefited from more cross-referencing or double-posting. These results are better than most indexes tested, and were classed as "very good" - just a few more access points required.

Coverage of Content

"The index is very comprehensive in covering the web site content, and it is indexed deeply. Every article, report, and conference paper is indexed by title, author, and subject. Each subsection of information-rich pages is indexed. One could argue that it is too deeply indexed, but since this is a membership organization site with repeat visitor who are likely going after specific information, this is fine."

Design

"The ability to easily change for font size of the index with a click on each page is a nice feature."

"The design is attractive and fits in well with the design of the entire site. I would prefer, however, that main entries are single-spaced, not double-spaced."

"The use of the padlock symbol for entries linked to restricted sections of the site is a good feature."

Cross References

"There is appropriate use of both see and see also references, yet references are not overused. See also references at both entries of a pair. See also references, name the referred term but link directly to the content when there are no subentries."

"The see cross-references seemed to be linked to the actual web pages. These are really subheadings and it would clearer if they were formatted as such. See cross-references go to another location in the index itself; none-the-less, the information could be found."