E-D Award Recipients

Enid Zafran, who has been indexing for over 40 years, found this book “a unique challenge.” The text examines the political and trade relations between two countries, each of which has adopted a false narrative concerning the other: America falsely blames its trade and technology threats on China yet overlooks its shaky domestic saving foundation; China falsely blames its growth challenges on America’s alleged containment of market-based socialism, ignoring its failure to achieve structural rebalancing.

Zafran commented, “[The book] presented a lot of jigsaw pieces . . . that I had to fit together (requiring a network of cross-referencing).” She worked closely with the author, who praised his indexer for producing “an outstanding index in all respects—it really brings the book to life as a tool for readers.”

The Ewart-Daveluy Award jury noted that the text is easy to read but not easy to index, with a high density of terms per page. Zafran’s “overall consistency of approach and decisions is stellar,” and they congratulate her for “outstanding work that required concentration, thoroughness, and distinguishing closely related notions.”

Congratulations to Yale University Press and Stephen Roach, the author, for recognizing the importance and value of a well-written index.

The index is available courtesy of Yale University Press.

Enid L. Zafran started indexing in 1975, working for a legal publisher in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1990 she moved to Washington, DC, to become Director of Indexing Services at the Bureau of National Affairs, where she oversaw a department of 40 indexers. Her business, Indexing Partners LLC, formed in 1989 and is now located in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. She has written extensively about indexing and given many presentations on the subject to indexing groups, librarians, and the general public. A founding member of the Institute of Certified Indexers, she offers an Indexing Boot Camp to newer indexers to help them learn indexing styles and techniques.

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. Eligible indexers are Canadian citizens or permanent residents of Canada, or non-Canadians who are members of ISC/SCI at the time of writing the index.

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 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.

In the award’s fifth year (in a year unlike any other), we are thrilled to note that the outstanding quality of submissions allowed two awards to be presented.

Audrey McClellan was presented with the Ewart-Daveluy Award for Indexing Excellence at the awards banquet of the Indexing Society of Canada in Winnipeg on June 9, 2018, for her index to Barry Gough’s Churchill and Fisher: Titans at the Admiralty, published by Seaforth Publishing.

As its title suggests, the book focuses on the relationship between Winston Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, and John Fisher, as First Sea Lord of the British Royal Navy, but also covers the evolution of the British Navy during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries and the relevant events of the First World War.

The indexing challenge was to compress 585 pages of what often felt like three books in one into a 13-page index accompanied by a short Index of Ships. Audrey rose to this challenge, achieving a thorough and comprehensive coverage of all relevant topics and personal names, along with the interrelationships between and among topics and names within the space constraints.

An excerpt from the index is available here, courtesy of Seaforth Publishing.

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.