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ASI Special Event: Indexing Life Hacks

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December 5, 2023

Life hacks are simple and clever tips or techniques for accomplishing a familiar task more easily and efficiently. Indexing life hacks are all about working smarter at the job of indexing. Four experts share the hacks they use to save time, minimize stress, and increase efficiency. Whether you’re wrestling with PDFs or footnotes, tracking clients and projects, or searching for a more comfortable office setup, we’ve got you covered. Join us December 5 for Indexing Life Hacks, a three-hour program crafted just for you.

Show Those PDFs Who’s Boss

Your client sends you a PDF with two-page spreads. Now what? Whip your PDFs in shape, that’s what. Learn how to break apart a spread, work around secured files, and renumber pages so that the PDF page 1 matches the book page 1. Hear various other hacks you can use when working with PDFs.

Kendra Millis began indexing in 2008, after completing the UC-Berkeley indexing course. She left a career in international education and chose to become a freelancer so she could return to her home state of Maine to raise her daughter. Her educational background is in Russian literature and social philosophy, although her indexing work spans a broad range of topics. She is currently one of the UC-Berkeley instructors and also owns a small fiber-arts business. She has chaired numerous ASI committees, served on the Board of Directors and was president of ASI in 2017–2018.

Project Tracking Like a Pro

Marilyn Augst figured out after her first few indexes years ago that she needed an organizational system to keep track of projects, clients, and payments. She uses the same system today. Hear her insights on organizing info on clients, projects, and statistics. Tracking when projects are coming in, planning how you need to allocate your time, and scheduling time for administrative work improves efficiency. Learn from a pro her system for handling project tracking.

Marilyn Augst has been a member of ASI since 1996, writing indexes for textbooks and trade books in math, engineering, physics, environmental sciences, education, service learning, and history. She was active in the Heartland Chapter, holding every committee chair and office at some point, and some offices twice, from 1998 thru 2009, and as one member said, “You were president for two centuries!” During Covid (2020), she and her tech support (aka husband) moved from Indiana back to her home state of Minnesota. Without in-person meetings, she has not yet met all the Upper Midwest Chapter folks, but hopes to in the coming years.

Making Work Feel Less Like Work

Your office setup plays a big role in how you feel at the end of the day, and it shouldn’t feel like you’ve been doing manual labor. Dr. Lindsay McGraw, expert on office ergonomics, reveals how you can achieve ergonomic health by properly setting up your office, noticing what hurts and discovering why, and establishing healthy habits for long-term wellness.

Dr. Lindsay McGraw, physical therapist, ergonomic expert, orthopedic certified specialist, and wellness enthusiast, started Marka Health in 2016 after recognizing that many of the injuries she was treating were preventable. Today she consults with top tech companies to keep their employees pain free and productive.

And Furthermore…: Tips for Indexing Notes

Often a bane in indexers’ lives, especially for those working in scholarly indexing, footnotes and endnotes need special attention. This session will provide some general guidelines for indexing notes, as well as tips to help speed your notes indexing. We’ll look at a number of different examples of types of notes and will discuss them as examples of what one often encounters in the thicket of notes.

Since 1995, Fred Leise has been indexing a broad variety of texts, specializing in scholarly works in international relations, cultural and political history, film studies, music, and contemporary social issues. His index to Art and Affection: A Life of Virginia Woolf was shortlisted for the 1997 Excellence in Indexing Award, the only time that a shortlist has been announced for that honor. Fred also works as a freelance taxonomy consultant, having completed projects for several Fortune 500 companies, as well as a number of clients in the hospitality and travel industry.

Get more details and register at
https://www.asindexing.org/news/special-event-indexing-life-hacks/
ISC/SCI members can register at the member rate using the coupon code available in the Member Dashboard.

Call for Submissions: ISC/SCI Ewart-Daveluy Award for Excellence in Indexing 2024

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Submission deadline: Friday, March 15, 2024

Submissions are open! The application has never been easier.

  • It’s all online.
  • You don’t need a hard copy — 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.

The benefits:

  • The winner will receive two tickets to the conference banquet at the next in-person conference.
  • We provide feedback for up to three runners-up.

No restriction to 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.

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 even if you don’t win, you’re very likely to receive expert confidential feedback. That’s worth a lot.

This year you can submit indexes published in 2022 and 2023. If you are a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident of Canada, this is the time to do it. If you are not a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, you may submit an index if you were a member of ISC/SCI at the time you wrote the index.

See the Ewart-Daveluy Award page for more information.

Conference 2024: Call for proposals

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The Conference Committee invites your proposals for ISC/SCI Conference 2024.

Proposals are being accepted until October 31, 2023.

This is an online conference taking place on Friday, May 31 and Saturday, June 1, 2024. Sessions will be 50 minutes in total (35–40 minutes for presentation followed by a 10–15 minute question-and-answer session).

The committee is seeking proposals in the following areas:

  • aspects of running an indexing business such as social media for marketing, profitability, project scheduling, website construction and management, connecting with clients and colleagues, etc.
  • technology related to indexing such as devices or equipment, non-indexing software, apps, or AI
  • improving/assessing index quality or usability from broad topics such as improving your speed to niche topics on specific languages, communities, or subjects
  • non-back-of-book indexing such as taxonomy, controlled vocabularies, thesaurus development
  • any niche or specialty topic you feel passionate about

Your application should include the following:

  • application form
  • description of proposed presentation (one page maximum in PDF format) with the following details
    • working title
    • outline of what will be covered
    • format of presentation (speaker only, accompanying slides, interactive elements, handouts, etc.)

Send your application to conferenceprogram@indexers.ca

ASI Online Learning Course: Indexing Art Books

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A three-part course with Theresa Duran. Presented on October 11, 18, and 25, 2023.

Art books represent a thriving segment of the publishing industry. They encompass a variety of book categories—from coffee-table books to exhibition catalogues to academic or technical studies—and an even greater array of subjects. What art books all have in common is an abundance of illustrations. The indexer must understand the conventions pertaining to specific types of artworks and the expectations that clients might have about the indexing of images.

This three-part course offers a comprehensive guide to the glorious world of art books. It begins with an overview of the field, then dives straight into the thicket of artist names, art titles, captions, and illustration locators. It wraps up with practical tips and strategies for avoiding clashes with clients, troubleshooting common problems (particularly index length restrictions), and finding work. Each session is filled with examples from actual art books. Additional examples and resources are included in the handout.

The course is designed to benefit both novice indexers who are interested in breaking into the field and experienced indexers who would like to hone their skills and gain confidence in their approach. Some of the tactics covered can be applied to books in other disciplines.

Course Overview

Session 1
Art Books: The Big Picture
  • My background in art publishing
  • Types of art books and their challenges
  • Types of art publishers and indexing clients
  • Q&A
Session 2
Artworks, Artists, and Locators
  • Common image organization schemes
  • A to Z of art captions
  • Illustration locators
  • Treatment of art titles
  • Treatment of artists
  • Q&A
Session 3
Projects: Getting Started, Troubleshooting, Finding Work
  • Questions to ask at the start of a project
  • Managing length restrictions
  • Setting rates and bidding on projects
  • Getting established in the field
  • Resources
  • Q&A

Please note: Attendance at the live sessions is not required. Registration entitles you to “on demand” access to the course and unlimited repeat viewings after the initial sessions have aired.

About our Presenter
Theresa Duran, PhD, is a former staff editor at a publishing house that specialized in art books, calendars, and other products for museum gift shops. She left that position in 2005 to become a full-time freelancer, offering indexing, copyediting, and proofreading services. In the past few years, Theresa has come to focus on the indexing of art books. A resident of Marin County, California, she is the current president of the American Society for Indexing (2023–24).

For more information and to register: https://www.asindexing.org/online-learning/art-duran/. ISC/SCI members have access to a discount code for this course in the Member Dashboard.