Users of FDEX

USERS OF FDEX

Because the FDEX Compiler is oriented to indexing full personal names in documents related to genealogy, it is used extensively for publications of the Alabama Genealogical Society (AGS) of which I am a member.

The Towns & Counties Of Alabama index (on the web at www.algensoc.org/Alabama-indexing)

In the spring of 2003, members of AGS and other volunteers began a project to index a three-volume set of books shelved at the Birmingham Public Library. The 1198 pages contain a wealth of information about people, places, and events of interest to historians and genealogists. In May of 2005, a consolidated index of all three volumes was completed, printed, bound and donated to the library. The index formatting was done by an Excel software program, the precursor to the FDEX compiler.

The AGS Magazine (distributed to AGS members and libraries twice yearly)

Averaging 70 pages of content each issue with a wealth of personal names, the pre-press text of each issue is run through an extractor (under development) that produces a rough extraction list, then the FDEX compiler completes the BoBdex*.

The Master Index to AGS Magazine Back Issues

In each of the 108 published issues, going back to 1967, the Table of Contents describes the articles with relevant terms in several categories, such as County Focus, Cemeteries, Deaths, Divorces, Slaves and African American topics.

The AGS Surname Booklet (for registrants of AGS seminars held Twice yearly)

Members attending these seminars submit up to six ancestral names that they are researching. The booklet gives the attendees an opportunity to connect with each other when they recognize a common ancestral name.

The AGS FFA Certificate Lists Index (on the web at www.algensoc.org/main/ancestorindex.pdf)

The names, abstracted from the First Families of Alabama Certificate holder web listing are compiled here in an index that points to the certificate number for an easy review of ancestors for which there may be a connection to the visitor to the AGS web site.

Tuscaloosa Court Book Records Filming project

A group of volunteers are cleaning, filming and transcribing names from volumes of historic court record books. From each transcription a BOBdex is compiled, printed and inserted into the respective book.

Trial Transcript

A rare 1929 courtroom transcript of a murder trial in Shelby County, Alabama listed so many names that a researcher, attempting to sort out the testimony turned to FDEX to compile an index. It will be used in the forthcoming book by the author

* BoBdex is an acronym for Back of the Book Index If a book has an index, the traditional place for it follows the content pages, although an index may be printed (or web published) separately from the book. As used in the context of the FDEX project, it refers to the classical index format where key subject terms are arranged alphabetically each followed by locators (usually pages numbers). The BoBdex format is also useful as a finding aid for other document types besides books.

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2012 Project for name extraction

I have just finished assisting my society in getting out an issue of our magazine following the retirement of our editor of some 15 years. I mainly worked on the page layout of the articles and so had to polish my skills in using MS Word to properly space and align photos to avoid large blocks of unnecessary "white space". I really don't know how the previous editor managed the indexing, but I was committed to using the FDEX compiler. The problem was to automate the extraction list from some 60 pages of content. Although the "non-contiguous selection" method works well (described on the web site) I decided to write a name extractor that would give me a rough list of all terms in which consecutive words all begin with upper case letters. In other words, in the sentence "Joe Doe took Sue Smith to lunch, the list would display: Joe Doe Sue Smith At this time the extractor does not distinguish between upper case words used as a sentence first-word. This can be resolved by logic that looks at the sentence first-word, compares it to a list of common first-words (like 'The', 'Then', 'A', etc.) and ignores extracting them. The project title for this extractor is FDEX2, but it is in the early stages of development and not yet posted to the web site. However, I will soon integrate it with a link from the "Tools" page and hope you will leave feedback for suggestions and reports of your experience in using it. Please register to receive future notices on news of this developing project

Questions? Comments?

I welcome questions and suggestions on Format-A-Dex in general  and the FDEX compiler and other tools specifically.   Leave your Q & S as a comment to this post so others may read, benefit and respond.
Note: Comments are moderated to avoid spam-bots.

Is it free?

Some early testers have asked if Format-A-Dex is a free service.  At this time it is. Obviously the more who use it, the more feedback I get and the more stable and robust it becomes.  My first consideration is that it be used by non-profit societies, particularly those who support publishing for the genealogical and historical interests communities. If support for it gets overwhelming, or it appears to be used by too many for commercial purposes, I will re-visit this policy.

Announcing Format-A-Dex

Format-A-Dex is a set of tools and guides to simplify and streamline the process of indexing a journal, newsletter, society magazine or any other document that is fact-filled with names, places and events. Because it was designed by a writer/editor involved in genealogy, Format-A-Dex is focused on the needs of editors in genealogical and historical societies.

At the site there is an on-line index formatting tool, a name reverser tool, and a tutorial on how to extract items from an MS-Word document for "Type Less" indexing. There are examples as well as links to other relevant web sites. You will also find a link to this blog for updated information on this project.

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