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.
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What practices will help me with good index term selection?
2017 Tamarack Award: JoAnne Burek
Indexing Society of Canada
Many of our members volunteer in various capacities, however one person in particular stood out this past year. At our awards banquet in Montreal on June 2, JoAnne Burek was honoured as our 2017 Tamarack award recipient .
JoAnne is deserving of this award for many reasons: JoAnne has a “yes, I’ll do that” work ethic and has shown dedication in improving the experience of members in our Society. In her creative and skilful style, she has crafted compelling and well-researched promotion pieces for our Society. She has taken the time to be present at events in order to promote the benefits of ISC/SCI. Finally, JoAnne continues with the detailed assignment of our website renewal project.
We are honoured to have JoAnne as a member of our Society. Congratulations to her!
2016 Ewart-Daveluy Award Recipient: Mary Newberry
Indexing Society of Canada
Mary Newberry was presented with the Ewart-Daveluy Award for Indexing Excellence at the awards banquet of the joint conference of the Indexing Society of Canada (ISC) and American Society for Indexing (ASI) in Chicago, IL, on 16 June 2016. The award honours Mary’s indexing of The Letterbooks of John Evelyn, volumes 1 and 2, edited by Douglas D.C. Chambers and David Galbraith and published by University of Toronto Press.
The Letterbooks of John Evelyn is a two-volume work with 1,150 pages and almost 900 letters between Evelyn and his 315 correspondents. John Evelyn, FRS, was an English writer, gardener and diarist of the late 1600s. His diaries are the usual source material for scholars, but like his diaries, Evelyn’s letters cast considerable light on the art, culture and politics of the time.
Making this letterbook material accessible to scholars was the job of the indexer, but it was not an easy job. The sheer volume of the material was one issue; another was the archaic diction and writing style of the seventeenth century. A third was the need to serve the scholars who were undoubtedly already familiar with the extensive index created for the 1955 publication of Evelyn’s diaries and would expect some correlation, while also serving modern indexing standards and user expectations. Interestingly, the index is not only printed in the books themselves but is also available online in clickable format. Despite these and other complications, Mary created a comprehensive index that demonstrates outstanding indexing expertise, analytical competence and index design skill. More than that, it exemplifies the index as a work of art.
An excerpt of the index is available here, courtesy of the University of Toronto Press.
Mary Newberry also received the 2016 Tamarack Award, for her services to the Society.
2015 Ewart-Daveluy Award Recipient: François Trahan
Indexing Society of Canada
2015 Ewart-Daveluy Award Recipient: François Trahan
For Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge, by Nancy J. Turner, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press. This two-volume ethnobotanical work reflects forty years of research into the people-plant interrelationships of the First Nations in British Columbia. The two indexes can be viewed here.