Indexing Society of Canada

2021-2022 Diversity in Canadian Publishing Bursary Award: datejie cheko green

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This month the Indexing Society of Canada / Société canadienne d’indexation (ISC/SCI) announced that datejie cheko green is the winner of the 2021-2022 ISC/SCI Diversity in Canadian Publishing Bursary Award.

datejie is a journalist, digital consultant, and interdisciplinary scholar whose knowledge production spans genres and sectors. Her research interests include decolonial and environmental movements with a focus on uncovering and translating the histories of systems, structures and relations that have led to inequalities today. She has been a union organizer for freelancers, equity-seeking journalists and knowledge workers in Canada and the US, leading her further into projects innovating digital justice.

Since entering journalism through community radio, datejie has tracked gaps and opportunities for more cohesive creation, publication and preservation of the work and works of marginalized peoples – as journalists, and as news subjects. Her early interests in archiving radio and film led her to self study and training of research methods, cataloguing systems, digital asset management software, metadata practices, national and international preservation standards and protocols. 

Looking back at history and forward to posterity, datejie’s current work seeks to address the contemporary urgency for digital literacy, media literacy, news literacy through radical, collective and community-minded publishing, preservation, and archiving. She is presently developing news programming and teaching modules focused by, for and about Black journalists. 

With this bursary, ISC/SCI aims to help achieve equality of opportunity for aspiring indexers belonging to underrepresented and/or marginalized groups. The bursary covers fees for an approved indexing program, two years of ISC membership with listing, and entry into the Mary Newberry Mentorship program.

In addition, six 6-month trial memberships were awarded to Sarah Kahale (BC), Alexander Benmerrouche (SK), Ashley Lavadinho (ON), Jude Klaassen (QC), Fenrir Cerebellion (BC), and Mieke Leigh (BC).

View press release.

Call for Submissions: ISC/SCI Ewart-Daveluy Award for Excellence in Indexing 2022

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Submissions are open! The application has never been easier.

  • It’s all online.
  • You don’t need a hard copy — just send a PDF of the published book AND/OR the PDF sent to you by the publisher plus your Word/RTF file of the index.
  • The cost is only $30.
  • We provide feedback for up to three runners-up.

No restriction on the subject matter or genre — textbooks, cookbooks, guidebooks, memoirs, art books, how-to books, travel books, all books — it’s your index we will be looking at.

Show us how you creatively overcame challenges, resulting in an outstanding, well-structured, easy-to-navigate, clear and comprehensive guide for all of its users.

Give us a challenge. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Maybe you’ll get the prize (which won’t happen if you don’t apply). And if not, you’re very likely to get expert confidential feedback. That’s worth a lot.

This year you can submit indexes published in 2020 and 2021. If you are a Canadian indexer or a Canadian resident, this is the time to do it. If you are not a Canadian citizen or resident, you may submit an index if you were a member of ISC/SCI at the time you wrote the index.

The deadline for submissions is March 15, 2022. Please see the awards page for guidelines, criteria, and the submission form.

2021 Ewart-Daveluy Award: Stephen Ullstrom

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The ISC/SCI Ewart-Daveluy Award, inaugurated in 2015, is presented each year to an individual who has created an index that demonstrates outstanding expertise through a combination of skills.

The 2021 Ewart-Daveluy Indexing award was presented to Stephen Ullstrom for his indexing of The Shield of Psalmic Prayer: Reflections on Translating, Interpreting, and Praying the Psalter, by Donald Sheehan, published in 2020 by Ancient Faith Publishing.

The Shield of Psalmic Prayer is a collection of essays, study notes, and personal journal entries on interpreting, translating, and praying with the Psalms in light of Orthodox Christian theology. The author, Donald Sheehan, was an English professor and long-time director of the Robert Frost Place in New Hampshire. The collection was gathered and edited posthumously by Donald’s widow, Xenia Sheehan. Because the text originally was not intended for publication, the pieces are often unfinished and unpolished, which gives the book a contemplative and quiet tone. About two-thirds of the chapters focus exclusively on a specific psalm or two. Stephen’s challenge was to understand these fragments and tie them to the broader themes of the book.

Stephen met the challenge of creating an excellent index. As one judge noted, “really nice detail and solid breakdowns under the Psalms.” Said another, “this is a properly done scripture index.” Other comments included “a good solid job on a difficult subject” and a “thorough, thoughtful index.” Finally, “it addresses the main needs of potential users.”

The index is available courtesy of Ancient Faith Publishing.

Stephen Ullstrom is a freelance indexer and writer residing in Edmonton, Alberta. He wrote his first index ten years ago, never imagining that that would lead to a full-time indexing career. In 2014 he won the Purple Pen Award for best new indexer. Stephen indexes in the humanities and social sciences with a special interest in Asian studies, religious studies, history, and biography.

Dennis Duncan to speak at 2022 Conference

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Following the success of the 2021 conference, ISC/SCI will again be holding the annual conference online, with dates to be announced soon. And so we are thrilled to announce that the keynote speaker for the 2022 Annual Indexing Conference will be Dennis Duncan, author of the newly released book Index, A History of the.

Charting its curious path from the monasteries and universities of thirteenth-century Europe to Silicon Valley in the twenty-first, Dennis Duncan reveals how the index has saved heretics from the stake, kept politicians from high office and made us all into the readers we are today. We follow it through German print shops and Enlightenment coffee houses, novelists’ living rooms and university laboratories, encountering emperors and popes, philosophers and prime ministers, poets, librarians and – of course – indexers along the way. Revealing its vast role in our evolving literary and intellectual culture, Duncan shows that, for all our anxieties about the Age of Search, we are all index-rakers at heart, and we have been for eight hundred years.

Dennis Duncan is a writer, translator, lecturer in English at University College London, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He has published numerous academic books, including Book Parts and The Oulipo and Modern Thought, as well as translations of Michel Foucault, Boris Vian, and Alfred Jarry. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement, and the London Review of Books, and recent articles have considered Mallarmé and jugs, James Joyce and pornography, and the history of Times New Roman.