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About 72% of my books are indexed. I have a lot of older books, mostly Canadian authors, that are not indexed. Although many of these books were once very popular, they are now not owned by enough members to merit indexing. This is too bad since they remain some of my favourites. I have indexed a few myself, and will continue to from time to time.

I sometimes write a note for an unindexed book noting some of the recipes I've made since this might be helpful to others.

I’m sure it’s been brought up before, but I can’t find the post: could the reference/recipe-free books be categorised as ‘Indexed’ with the ‘No recipe’ tag still attached? I’d consider these books to be indexed if there’s nothing in them requiring indexing. It also might save some consternation about the number of ‘unindexed’ books in the collection!

I'm a new member with about 600 cookbooks, and I'm disappointed to hear that the percentage of indexed cookbooks more than 20 years old seems to be low. The newer recipes are so often "borrowed" and posted on some site or another that they are easier to find with a browser search. It would seem that the older cookbooks are the ones that should be indexed as those recipes would be hardest to track.

Theczarina - we index cookbooks according to how many EYB members own them. So if our members own more recent cookbooks then they will get indexed in preference to older books owned by fewer members. Having said that a fairly large proportion of indexed books are more than 10 years old:
10 years old or less - 54%
Between 10 and 20 years old - 31%
Over 20 years old - 15%

I don't agree with you that an index of a more recent book is less useful because you can find the recipe easily online (not true in many cases). Our members want to search their entire cookbook collection at once to find a recipe not Google to see what may show up randomly.

Speaking of indexing older books, gratitude and kudos to the member who indexed Jane Grigson's Fish Cookery, a classic but one with 400-plus recipes; just released from review today or yesterday.

I understand what members want, Jane. That's why I joined.

Can I just echo this sentiment. I think it's really kind of crazy to classify books with no recipes as unindexed instead of indexed. If someone has taken the time to go through the book and determined that the book has no recipes then that book has been indexed. Aren't there any plans to change this?

No recipes means nothing to index.

Right. So why would you consider a book with no recipes to be unindexed? It makes no sense at all.