When selecting which reader tools you need to include in your text you need to consider the sophistication of your readers, the size of your text, the amount of detail in your text and the size of each text chunk and how well people will be able to navigate through those chunks to obtain the information they will want to obtain.
The range of reader tools that are considered here include:• Table of Contents
• Index
• Glossary
• References
• Acknowledgements
• Library References
There are other tools that you may consider in much larger texts. These have not bee considered here as they have not been envisioned in the system outlined here as necessary. These additional tools include:
• Footnotes
• Captions
• Cross-references
• Tables of Figures
• Tables of Authorities
• Hyperlinks and Menus
• Navigation Information
Including a Table of Contents is related to the number of pages a reader would have to thumb through in order to gain an idea of what is in the document. A document under twenty pages in length does not require a Table of Contents if used as a paper document.
However, when we apprehend an ebook, every ebook regardless of size should have a Table of Contents. In the electronic environment there are fewer clues as to the size of the document and what is housed in the document and so any clues we can give the reader as to the size of the document, what is included in the document and therefore the commitment the reader is going to need to give in order to work with the document.
A Table of Contents should give a reader at the least a list of the sections or chapters in the book. You can add a list of the page on which each section starts or in an electronic environment it is better to give a hyperlink to the start of the section. You can, for the Rolls Royce model give both a page number and a hyperlink to give maximum information and usefulness to the reader.
A Table of Contents over one page in size is not very useful to a reader. A Table of Contents should provide a reader with a way to gain an overview of the document, and if the reader has to wade through four pages of Contents, the reader will lose perspective of the total picture of the text. Since in this system that I am describing we are including only three levels of heading, your Table of Contents will not have more than three levels of heading at a maximum. However, if your Table of Contents ranges over more than one page, then consider cutting out one level of heading; drop the headings you include from three heading levels down to two heading levels.
Your Table of Contents should tell a logical story. If you read all the headings at Heading 1 Level, you should apprehend a logical development of the topic. If each chapter is another set of instructions to get an overall job done, reading each chapter heading should sound like you are reading a summary of how to get this job done. If you are writing an explanation of the parts of an engine, then you should see the sub-systems of the engine in each chapter and therefore the headings under that sub-system should be a name for each part. There are other logical ways of making a Table of Contents make sense, of which these are just a few suggestions.
An Index in a paper document is a way for a reader to pinpoint exactly where in the document a concept or an idea is discussed in the text. There is no point in including the larger ideas that can be obtained by a reading of the Table of Contents. Rather, an Index is a way of getting to those sub-ideas that are buried in the text chunks for which there are not headings.
Many people have the idea that an Index is a list of places where a word is found in the document. This is indeed an idea of what a Concordance is –the location in the text where every word can be found. An index is rather a way of getting to the concepts of the document –those concepts that when linked together form the argument or the main message of the document.
There are devices in building an Index that should be included even in the most basic form of an Index. You will see in an index an entry similar to the following:Human communication tools . . . . 55 Email . . . . 32
Print . . . . 67
Book . . . . 33
Computer . . . . 12, 15, 32, 55, 57, 59
The idea is that the main heading gives a larger concept contained in the book, and each of the sub-headings provides a location where those sub-ideas are located that help us gain an appreciation for and an understanding of that main idea. As a reader I can gain some other clues as well about the subject matter –because of the number of pages on which the concept of a computer as a tool of human communication I listed, the book to which this index entry belongs is likely to be centrally about computers.
An Index is needed in a document when one or more of the following conditions are true for your book:• The book in paper or eBook format (.pdf or similar) is over 70 pages in length;
• There are more than 150 thoughts in your ‘Topic’ section of your brain for which you have a text chunk for each thought;
• In texts that your readers work with, they normally have an index and therefore your readers rely on an Index for most every book they read –such as a student community that are in learning contexts, university teachers, librarians;
• Where your book is over 20,000 words and you have only two heading levels.
A Glossary is a list of key words and concepts upon which your text is built. Without these words or phrases you book would not be written. Your Glossary should tell the entire story of the text in summary form. That is, if you read the Glossary from beginning to end you would have in summary what the text is about. Your Glossary also give readers the history or background as to where those concepts originated and are used.
It is not essential that you include a Glossary in every text you build. There are locations where a Glossary is absolutely essential though. If one or more following situations are true for your text then you should include a Glossary:
• Your text is to be used as a textbook in a school or university;
• Your text is to be read by novices in the area and are needing to learn how to enter this area of thinking or activity and need to therefore know how to think and talk about the topic;
• This book is a definitive rendition of the topic and is likely to be the only place where such is expounded;
• You use words in new ways that very few other people use in this way;
• Your readers are sophisticated readers and are likely to be quite precise in the way they use words and want to see exactly how you use the terms and phrases in comparison to others.
In the academic world, referencing is absolutely essential to give acknowledgement to the writer’s sources. A reference page is absolutely essential in those cases where a publication is designed for academic use.
In most settings where information is to be apprehended in an online environment, it is useful to embed references as hyperlinks to other texts and sites, or even the text itself where it warrant cross-referencing. Where you quote a book, it should be quoted and then references to, at a minimum, a site where the book can be read or purchased, such as a reference to Amazon, which is perhaps one of the most stable listings of books in print, and a location where the book can be purchased online.
However, in other settings a Table of References is useful for the following reasons:• Where this text is an introductory text to the subject and more detailed renditions are provided elsewhere;
• Where the aim of the book is to expand a person’s thinking even beyond your text;
• Should you readership be novices in the area and need a helping hand into the thought processes common to your thinking;
• Where you, or your colleagues, have written other texts and an understanding of this text can only be had by reading those other texts;
• Maybe this is a manual of which there are other versions of the manual designed for other markets that handle more information than in this particular version.
An Acknowledgement page is usually added as one of the front pages of a text. The primary reason for acknowledgements is that if you are reporting on a topic for which you were not the originator of the ideas, and that the ideas have not been published before, that you are collecting ideas from a range of people to whom you must give credit.
In this new world of text chunking, you may also consider adding an Acknowledgement page to acknowledge the use of text that you have written in other texts, and/or where you have express permission by other authors to use their text chunks within the text. This may also be a place where you might display any licenses you have purchased for graphics, or text chunks.
You are now entering your work into the greater world of textuality. You are building a valid text which can be internationally acknowledged as a book in print, or a series publication, such as a serial of newsletters.
To make your book useful to others, such as librarians who are heavy users of knowledge, and/or academics who must recommend texts to other people as a source of information, you should apply for and obtain an ISBN or an ISSN. The ISBN is a unique machine-readable identification number, which marks any book unmistakably. For 30 years the ISBN has revolutionized the international book-trade. 159 countries and territories are officially ISBN members.
The ISBN (International Standard Book Number) is a 10-digit number that uniquely identifies books and book-like products published internationally. Each number identifies a unique edition of a publication, from one specific publisher, allowing for more efficient marketing of products by booksellers, libraries, universities, wholesalers and distributors.
When you obtain an ISBN for your text you can automatically get listed in the International Books in print. If you are serious about building your text for information sharing and knowledge building you should obtain an ISBN even if you do not intend to sell your text.
ISBN numbers are usually placed on the same page as the Copyright information and also on the back of the book in printed versions.