Vol. 64/No.18 May 8, 2000

Pathfinder Reprint Project's indexing team doubles output

BY DEAN DENN0

WASHINGTON—In order to take advantage of the new computer-to-plate technology installed last year in Pathfinder's print shop, a large group of volunteers is converting all Pathfinder books and pamphlets into computer files.

Many of the Pathfinder Reprint Project's newest volunteers have joined the index concordance production team. This team was the most recent one organized as part of the effort to put all of Pathfinder's titles into digital form.

After proofreading, the text of each Pathfinder book is reformatted using modern, easily readable typefaces and layout. This changes the number of pages in a book, so the index must be converted to match the new pages. The conversion of the old index to the new page numbering is called index concordance. Index concordance is one of the last steps in preparing a book for digital reprinting. It cannot be done until the text is formatted, checked, and ready to print. In earlier stages of the Reprint Project, index concordance was done by the volunteers who formatted the text. This could involve weeks of work by a single volunteer and slowed down the production of reprints.

The index concordance department was organized in the fall of 1999 to help relieve this production bottleneck. It includes volunteers who do only index concordance work as well as some who do proofreading or formatting and take an occasional assignment in indexing. This is possible because the index work is done in concentrated spurts, to complete an index as quickly as possible once the book text is ready. The goal is to have almost all of the volunteers able to do the indexing work, so that our overall monthly production of books can reach 10. So far, about 40 volunteers have participated in this aspect of the Reprint Project's production.

Index concordance begins with looking up an entry in the index of the old book. The volunteer then finds the same text in the new book and notes the page number to be entered in the new index. Because the new book is available only in electronic form the work must be done at the computer. However, it does not require a high level of computer skills, which makes this work attractive to many of the new volunteers.

With increased experience and improved written instructions it has been possible to quickly integrate many new volunteers. This has made it possible to double the output of the index concordance department in a short time. We completed four indexes totaling 33 pages in the last three months of 1999; in January through March of this year we finished nine indexes totaling 67 pages.

The April goals of the team include three indexes totaling 28 pages: Book 1 of What Is Surrealism?, Thomas Sankara Speaks, and The Leninist Strategy of Party Building. It will be necessary to involve more volunteers and further increase our output in order to meet the Reprint Project's overall goal of digitizing 10 Pathfinder titles per month.

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