A book's table of contents is located within the first few pages after the copyright page. The table of contents lists the chapters of the book and the pages that mark the beginning and end of each chapter. Some texts include more details than just the chapter headings, including sub-chapters with more specific titles or information. For example, a history textbook might list the chapter "The American Revolution" as well as sub-chapters such as "Declaring Independence," "The Path to War" and "Rebuilding Government." The table of contents is useful for quickly directing you to the general area of the text relevant to your interests, but it does not provide specific facts or information.
At the end of the text you might find a glossary of important terms located in the body of the text. The glossary is a text-specific dictionary that includes definitions of terms used in the text, as well as key information about important events, people or places. Glossaries are useful for looking up specific information about text-specific terms. For example, if you are struggling to remember the specific formula for calculating the area of a circle, you can reference the glossary of a math textbook by looking up "area" or "area of a circle" instead of reading the entire chapter on calculating area.
The text's index is an alphabetical list of topics covered in the body of the book and the specific page numbers where each topic is mentioned. Indexes are particularly useful if you are interested in quickly locating information about an idea that is likely covered in a text. For example, an English literature anthology might include an index reference for alliteration; one of the page numbers listed might have a straight-forward definition of alliteration while another page might have an example of a poem that uses alliteration.
Supplemental information that expands on the information in a text is often relegated to the appendices. Appendices often include information that would disrupt the body of the text but still contain relevant information, such as full-spread maps or multipage charts. Useful reference material is often kept in the appendices in the back of the book. For example, a chemistry textbook will often include a full periodic table of the elements in an appendix while a history textbook might include several different maps in the appendices.
The format of the text body itself may also include visual cues that highlight important information. Paragraph headings summarize the information in the following text. Bolded or italicized words are often vocabulary terms that can be found in the glossary. Photographs or images and their captions are typically supplementary material or visual representations of key textural information. If you are skimming a text for information, pay attention to these types of in-text notations to focus on the main points of the text.