In 1996 Steve G. Steinberg suggested, `As automated indexing becomes available, we will begin to depend on it. It will encourage people to write plainly, without metaphors or double entendres that might confuse a search engine'. Nancy Mulvany commented, `I dread the day when as a writer my primary audience is a search engine!' By 1996 the Internet was well established globally. Many journals were coming to be published in electronic format, and their print indexes abandoned, as document delivery and indexing services for electronic searching proliferated. The NISO committee revising the ANSI standard on indexes failed to distinguish between authored indexes and machine-generated lists. Indexers Available, the Society of Indexers's annual directory, included among the skills offered by its members: database construction, electronic publishing consultancy, embedded indexing, hypertext design and software development. Just around the corner were Google and eBooks. The word "index" had been totally hijacked by the techies.
Robert Collison had suggested in 1961 that indexing was then in its Late Mediaeval era, `while the machine has been silently creeping up on us until it is now peering over our stooping shoulder' (Collison 1961). By 1996, indexing was no longer in its Printed Works Only era, but was entering the age that was also of virtual text and ethereal indication. It seems an appropriate point at which to conclude this account of indexers who workedwholly, or, latterly, at least chiefly, on the printed word.