The Indexing Society of Canada / Société canadienne d’indexation (ISC/SCI) is Canada’s national association of indexers.
We invite you to find an indexer for your project, read our publications, discover our conferences, events, and resources for indexers, find out about membership, and learn about the Society.
Find an indexer
Find an indexer who works in the subject area of your project.
Find resources
Find information about indexes, indexing practices, and training in indexing.
Attend an event
Attend a local meeting of indexers or attend the annual conference.
Become a member
Join the Society and enjoy the benefits of membership.
Featured Post
What practices will help me with good index term selection?
While you are in Winnipeg
JoAnne Burek
On the confluence of the Red River and the Assiniboine River lies Winnipeg. For thousands of years, this area was the crossroads of canoe routes linking the Indigenous Peoples of the north to those of the south along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers.
And it was here that, according to Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) oral tradition, a very large peace meeting took place 500–700 years ago among about ten different Indigenous groups.
That’s something to think about as we arrive for our annual conference in June.
Winnipeg is an extraordinary multicultural city that values its heritage and its inclusivity. You’ll experience it for yourself when you take in just some of these must-do activities.
The Forks
The Forks is one of Winnipeg’s most beloved places. Located at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, it’s a unique combination of park-like atmosphere combined with restaurants, shopping, a river walk, and more. Chances are very good that there will be an outdoor event going on when we’re there.
Visit theforks.com
The Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR)
“The world’s only museum that explores human rights as a concept and aspiration. It is not built around a collection of artifacts, but designed to illuminate a powerful idea. Visitors embark on an inspiring journey from darkness to light – exploring global human rights stories through a uniquely Canadian lens.” (Source: CMHR)
One of the exhibitions that will be running in June is “Canadian Doctors in the Field,” the stories of three doctors who have worked in conflict zones.
Visit humanrights.ca
The Exchange District
This historic thirty-block district is considered one of Canada’s architectural marvels. Named for the original Grain Exchange that operated from 1880 to 1913, it features massive brick warehouses, terracotta-clad buildings, and cobblestone lanes. Movies are filmed here.
Take a historic walking tour and linger at trendy Old Market Square where you’ll find bistros, galleries, vintage and antique shops, and café culture.
Visit exchangedistrict.org
Canadian Mint
For a unique experience, visit the high-tech manufacturing facility that produces all the coins in circulation in Canada plus the coins of eighty other countries. That’s billions of coins each year!
Visit http://www.mint.ca/store/mint/visit-the-mint/winnipeg-location-8900024#.Wd5axDBrxnk
Assiniboine Park: Conservatory and English Gardens and Leo Mol Sculpture Garden
The English Garden is nearly three acres of flowers, shrubs, and trees. It was established between 1926 and 1927 to inform visitors about floriculture. New plant varieties are added every year. The Rose Garden has more than 400 bushes of Floribunda, Grandiosa, and the prairie-hardy Rugosa varieties.
Leo Mol (1915–2009) was a Ukrainian Canadian stained-glass artist and prolific sculptor. His works are displayed around the world (such as the likenesses of three popes in the Vatican, the Queen on Parliament Hill, and Sir William Stephenson C.C. [code name “Intrepid”] at the CIA headquarters in Langley, VA).
The Leo Mol Sculpture Garden includes a gallery, renovated studio, and outdoor display.
Visit assiniboinepark.ca/park-landing/home/explore/gardens
Winnipeg Art Gallery
Canada’s sixth-largest art gallery contains works spanning ten centuries, including the largest collection of Inuit art in the world. The landmark building is made of Manitoba Tyndall stone and has a rooftop restaurant.
Visit wag.ca
Regional Cuisine
Winnipeg has a thriving food culture, thanks to its creative, multicultural makeup and the bounty of the surrounding Canadian Prairie farmland, lakes, aspen forests, and wetlands.
Take a self-guided food tour by downloading the “Culinary Trails” guides on the Tourism Winnipeg website. With tours such as the international “Around the World in 8 or 9 Plates” and the regional “Homegrown Trail” there is much to discover.
Our Conference Venue – the Iconic Fort Garry Hotel
JoAnne Burek
The Fort Garry Hotel was built over a hundred years ago in Canada’s era of grand railway hotels. This was a time when the railways were encouraging well-heeled tourists to travel transcontinentally.
The Fort Garry has been designated a National Historic Site of Canada, due to its Château-style architecture. This distinctly Canadian architectural type was the signature style for many of the railway hotels, as well as some important public buildings in Ottawa. (Learn more about the Château style and railway hotels.)
Inside, the hotel’s Old World elegance blends with contemporary comfort and style. Overall, it’s an iconic Canadian landmark hotel.
As the Fort Garry is our conference venue, conference attendees can stay for a very good rate. All you have to do is use the Group Code which you’ll find on the conference page of our website here.
Save the date
Indexing Society of Canada
Winnipeg, June 8 – 9, 2018
Fort Garry Hotel
Navigating the confluence of text and context
Get into the flow and join us in Winnipeg for our 2018 conference.
- Discover the best tips and techniques for your indexing practice
- Explore new insights and ideas for your business and career
- Meet and mingle with colleagues old and new
Winnipeg is an extraordinary city situated on the Canadian Prairie at the crossroads of ancient North American canoe routes. Consider lingering a while to experience the rich multicultural heritage, the prairie landscape, and illuminating attractions such as the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (“the world’s only museum that explores human rights as a concept and aspiration”) and the Winnipeg Art Gallery (the largest collection of Inuit art in the world).
To help you plan your travel, here’s the schedule of activities:
- Thursday, June 7: a pre-conference event
- Friday, June 8: breakfast, sessions from 9 until 5, and banquet dinner at 6:30
- Saturday, June 9: breakfast, sessions from 9 until 5, followed by a reception at the conference hotel
- Sunday, June 10: a possible workshop or other event, to be announced in January.
Watch the 2018 Conference Page for more details and announcements.
We hope to see you there!
Winner of 2017 Purple Pen: Sergey Lobachev
Indexing Society of Canada
Sergey Lobachev has won the 2017 Purple Pen Competition sponsored by the Institute of Certified Indexers. His index will appear in the book The Magnificent Nahanni: The Struggle to Protect a Wild Place by Gordon and Shirley Nelson (published by the University of Regina Press). The judges praised his index for its strong treatment of the book’s main topics which would especially aid a re-reader trying to find material. Moreover, he provided useful conceptual analysis, for entries like “wilderness” that a word search would not catch; it takes intellectual analysis of the text to recognize these, and the index showed he had put real thought into compiling and structuring these entries.
Sergey said that this was his first project for the University of Regina Press whom he had solicited for work by sending a letter to the Press. He found the book a challenge to index as it involved distinguishing among the Nahanni ecosystem, Nahanni National Park Reserve, Nahanni people, Nahanni River, and Nahanni Valley. He also had to carefully input the diacritics which he did accurately and showed his attention to detail.
Sergey completed the University of California, Berkeley, course “Indexing: Theory and Application” in 2013, and shortly after had launched his indexing business. A Board member of the Indexing Society of Canada/Société canadienne d’indexation, he lives in London, Ontario. Prior to becoming an indexer, he worked in academic and public libraries, and he holds a Master of Library and Information Science degree from the University of Western Ontario. He also retains a membership in the American Society for Indexing (ASI).
This is the fourth year that the contest has been held by ICI, and it is interesting to note what a strong showing the Canadian indexers have made in the contest, winning three out of four years! The competition was stiff for the winner, with several people entering again and using prior feedback from earlier years’ entries to improve their work. The judges noted especially that the newbies were doing a better job in handling the metatopic in their work. All entrants receive a detailed feedback scoresheet.
The judging is done anonymously by three members of the Institute of Certified Indexers (ICI). The winner receives a check for $100 as well as the publicity of appearing on the ICI website: www.certifiedindexers.com and notification of the book’s publisher and authors. This honor also helps the new indexer in terms of building confidence and gaining career satisfaction.
2017 Ewart-Daveluy Award Recipient: Judy Dunlop
Indexing Society of Canada
Congratulations to Judy Dunlop on receiving the 2017 Ewart-Daveluy Indexing Award!
Judy Dunlop was presented with the Ewart-Daveluy Award for Excellence in Indexing at the awards banquet of the Indexing Society of Canada in Montréal on 2 June 2017. The award honours Judy’s indexing of One Child Reading: My Auto-Bibliography by Margaret Mackey, published by the University of Alberta Press.
One Child Reading is a unique and fascinating examination of reading and literacy development. Author Margaret Mackey revisits the things she read, viewed, listened to and wrote as she grew up in the 1950s and 1960s in Newfoundland. Her reading included school texts, knitting patterns, musical scores, games, church bulletins, family magazines and hundreds of books. In One Child Reading, Mackey weaves her growing literacy and social consciousness with the books of her childhood and youth and the history of the time and place.
The indexer’s challenge was to combine in one comprehensive, cohesive index the three aspects of the book: the author’s memories, the theoretical discussion and the analysis of specific texts. In addition to standard terminology to cover off the biographical details, the indexer had to incorporate the sometimes unique terms the author created for the textual criticism and social analysis. As one judge noted, “This is an indexer who’s not afraid to directly express the language of the text … and also to use some ingenuity in handling sections like the distinction between a subject in theory vs. its relation to the author’s life.” Said another, “The index is wonderfully fulsome and narrative, and brief and concise—quite a feat.” “There are some lovely discoverables in this index,” said the third. The author herself was “awestruck” by the “sensitivity of [the indexer’s] reading.”
An excerpt of the index is available here, with permission courtesy of the University of Alberta Press.