Marnie Lamb was presented with the Ewart-Daveluy Indexing Award at the Annual General Meeting of the Indexing Society of Canada on 14 June 2026. The award honours Marnie’s indexing of Canadian Watercolours and Drawings in the Royal Ontario Museum, Volume 3, by Mary Allodi and Arlene Gehmacher, published by the Royal Ontario Museum.
The ISC/SCI Ewart-Daveluy Indexing Award is presented each year to an individual who has created an index that demonstrates outstanding expertise, the ability to analyze complex text and the ability to design an index that significantly enhances reader use of the text.
The first two volumes of Canadian Watercolours and Drawings in the Royal Ontario Museum were published in the 1970s and written by curator Mary Allodi. Current curator Arlene Gehmacher continued the work of Allodi, who had been writing the third volume when she died in 2021. The book contains images and descriptions of artworks acquired by ROM since 1972. Canadian Watercolours and Drawings documents a history of Canada through the images of natural and built environments, individuals, events and daily life. It is, as ROM’s website says, an evocative “window into Canada’s past”.
The indexer faced three main challenges: respecting the traditions established by the indexes to the earlier volumes while balancing the needs of modern readers and researchers; making difficult choices to encapsulate the extensive details about each artwork within the limited space for the index; and working within a lengthy production process involving multiple editors and writers. Marnie met all challenges with thorough, thoughtful professionalism, creating an index that, in her publisher’s words, is a work of art in itself.
The award jury recognized these issues and praised Marnie’s handling of them. Said one, the indexer “respects former and present curators’ approaches while creating a professional index that makes the book’s contents infinitely more accessible.” Nice distinctions were made between such things as hills as forms and hills in landscapes. The judges were impressed with her crafting of a superbly detailed style sheet, which ensured both consistency and thoroughness. Further, “This was no run-of-the-mill indexing contract. … The lengthy production process and how she handled it in such a calm and measured way was impressive.” In summary, it was praised as a meticulously detailed, highly accurate index to a complicated text.
Says Marnie herself, “Canadian Watercolours and Drawings was one of those projects that come along only once every few years—rich, complex and surprising, like a meal prepared by a Michelin-starred chef. I’m thrilled not only to have had the opportunity to engage with such a challenging text but also to have prepared an index that did justice to the material—a dessert worthy of the dinner.”
Congratulations to Marnie Lamb and the Royal Ontario Museum!
The index is available here courtesy of the Museum.
Marnie Lamb is an Ontario-based indexer, editor, permissions researcher, writer and teacher with over two decades of freelance and in-house experience. She holds MAs in English literature and creative writing from the University of Ottawa and the University of Windsor.
The Ewart-Daveluy Award is named after two historical figures who indexed and recognized the importance of indexes. Marie-Claire Daveluy (1880-1968) was a librarian, cataloguer, bibliographer and historian. She co-founded and directed the library school at the Université de Montréal and published historical works, children’s fiction and cataloguing rules, including those for subject headings. She also published a monumental work on Jeanne Mance, which has an index, in 1934. John S. Ewart (1852?-1933) published Ewart’s Index of the Statutes in several subsequent editions during the 1870s. He was a respected lawyer who practised in Toronto and then Winnipeg and was a member of the team that defended Louis Riel.