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.
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Find an indexer who works in the subject area of your project.
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Find information about indexes, indexing practices, and training in indexing.
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Attend a local meeting of indexers or attend the annual conference.
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Featured Post
What practices will help me with good index term selection?
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.
2017 Conference concludes
Indexing Society of Canada
The 2017 conference was a success. Reports are to come.
In the meantime, here is a photo of some happy ISC/SCI Conference Attendees
Left to Right: Anna Oliver, Noeline Bridge, Christine Jacobs, Alex Peace, Judy Dunlop, Heather Ebbs, Margaret de Boer (Photo: Elizabeth Huyer)
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.