Pastorius’s Octavo Index is a separately bound volume for navigating the Beehive Manuscript. The index presents an alphabetical list of concepts and ideas in the Beehive and lists relevant entries in the manuscript. The index contains information for many of the entries in his Alvearium, which consists of the Alphabetical Section and the Numerical Section. Occasionally, Pastorius will also connect concepts in the index to other sections of the Beehive Manuscript.
Entries in the Octavo Index refer to both the Alphabetical Section and the Numerical Section. If Pastorius wants to indicate an entry links to the Alphabetical Section, he writes an a after the word. The Digital Beehive presents these entries as metadata and as hyperlinks that will direct the user automatically to the corresponding entry in the Alphabetical Section. Numbers after the entries indicate a reference to the Numerical Section of the Alvearium. The Digital Beehive team hopes to annotate these numerical entries at some point in the future, but for now, the numerical cross references are presented as metadata. The hyperlink will take the user to the page in the Beehive where the numerical entry is located.
The Octavo Index also directs the reader to page numbers in the Beehive. These numbers refer to Pastorius’s own system of pagination and direct the reader to portions of the book outside the Alvearium. The references to the page numbers are presented as metadata and as a hyperlink to the corresponding page in the manuscript. As the Digital Beehive team continues to annotate and learn more about the book, the team hopes to include richer metadata and annotation for these entries.
Pastorius also directs the reader to other index entries. These cross-references are indicated through an s. These entries are annotated as “see” and are presented as metadata and hyperlinks to the relevant section. Pastorius will also indicate a cross reference through “Add.” “Add.” references are ambiguous and therefore are presented only as metadata at the moment. Users are encouraged to use the search function to explore these references.
Occasionally, metadata will not link. Unlinked metadata is due to uncertainty in Pastorius’s system of cross-referencing. Either the cross reference does not unambiguously match the entry, or the entry is not in the Beehive. In this event, the search function can be used to find relevant information.
Certain cross references are problematic. The following tags are used to indicate problematic entries: