Abstract
The Aslib Informatics Group and its predecessor the Co‐ordinate Indexing Group have made several attempts to understand the indexing process. This has been sought through seminars and indexing projects. The seminars produced some data on an ad hoc basis and although most have been assembled they have not been reported previously. More recently a formal project, involving sixteen volunteer indexers, has been organized around five short New Scientist articles and the data from this exercise form the major component in the present study. An attempt has been made to correlate indexer performance with the original texts. There appears to be evidence to support the assertion that the selection of index entries is related to the structure of the original texts, especially the frequency of individual words.

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