http://www.nationalpost.com/scripts/printer/printer.asp?f=/stories/20020319/377974.html
Little piece (book review) on indexes and indexing. Good books have good indexes. (I really want to write "indices.") Robert Latham, editor of the 11-volume set of Pepys's diaries, says somewhere that he and his wife spent something like two years on the index alone. And it is a fantastic index. If you look up money, for example, you are referred to all entries that mention his bank balance. (At one stage I wanted to graph bank balance vs. time.)
More indexing trivia: the 1897 Sears, Roebuck and Co. Consumer's Guide says: "If you don't find it in the Index, look very carefully through the entire catalog." (This is the quote that heads the index to Knuth's TAOCP, Volume 3.)