I find the inex very handy, for example if I wanted to find Oscar Gaddy's articles on Damascus Steel it lists the Volumes, issues and pages to look up. The same can be done to find a reference to an obscure gun maker, any place in any of the issues will be shown, if the are pictures it will be anotated. IMO this is a very useful research tool. The index is the column an the righ hand side of the pages.