Access to Nonbook Materials: The Limits of Subject Indexing for Visual and Aural Languages

There are instances where a message expressed in one medium cannot adequately be transposed to another. A recent review of the opera Mrs. Dalloway reflects upon the impossibility of creating an opera (or in the case of Orlando, a movie) out of Virginia Woolfs mature novels, insofar as these novels do not “speak about reality so much as mirror it in complexity of form” (Griffiths, 1993, p. 113). The reviewer likens the attempt to change mediums to trying to trap “a cloud in order to make ice cubes: the material is there, for sure, but it’s spread through a whole lot else, and the manufacturing process changes it beyond all recognition” (p. 113). Equating the medium with the message would seem to pose dire consequences for indexing, for it can be asked how can access to one medium be provided through another? More specifically, how can nonbook materials, such as visual and musical works, be subject-indexed using the medium of language. To say that “the medium is the message” is to assert that the form in which a message is conveyed is inseparable from its content. To demonstrate the truth of the assertion “the medium is the message,” McLuhan asks us to compare a display of the Stars and Stripes to a display of a piece of cloth on which is written the phrase “American flag.” The symbolism, while different, conveys the same ideational meaning, but the effect is quite dissimilar: “to translate the rich visual mosaic of the Stars and Stripes into written form would be to deprive