ASI News
—Register and Join Your Fellow Indexers in Raleigh at “Indexing Crossroads”!
—ASI Webinar—Business Strategies for Indexers with Sergey Lobachev
—2020 ASI Excellence in Indexing Award: Call for Submissions
—Call for 2020 Hines Award Nominations
—ASI Remembers Rachel Rice
News from Other Organizations
—Registration Now Open for 2020 STC Summit
ASI News
Join Your Fellow Indexers in Raleigh at “Indexing Crossroads”!
Registration is open
Click to see the conference program.
VisitNC/visitRaleigh.com
Conference chair Kendra Millis has lined up a great schedule of educational programs. View the program, check out our distinguished speakers, and get other conference information on the conference page here. Register for Indexing Crossroads, April 23-25, 2020, and join indexers from across the country when they meet in conveniently located Raleigh.
ASI Webinar—Business Strategies for Indexers with Sergey Lobachev
Wednesday, February 19, 2020
Running an indexing business is a challenging task. The path to success depends on various factors, including effective marketing, strong customer relations, sound project management, thoughtful organization of the office space, and responsible financial management. All those factors, however, should align with a unique business strategy and a set of actions that helps your company to stay competitive in a constantly changing environment. Business strategies are equally important for big corporations and for small enterprises, for new and for established companies.
This webinar provides an introduction to the concept of business strategy, explains its relevance to the indexing profession, outlines the stages of development and implementation of business strategy, and explains why strategic thinking is important to the overall success of your business.
Sergey Lobachev launched his indexing business in 2014. He writes back-of-the-book indexes for scholarly monographs, textbooks, and trade publications focusing on literature in humanities and social sciences. His technical expertise includes embedded indexing in MS Word using Word Embed and DEXembed and indexing in LaTeX.
To register for the webinar, click here.
2020 ASI Excellence in Indexing Award: Call for Submissions
Sheila Ryan was awarded ASI’s 2019 Excellence in Indexing Award for her index to Churchill Documents, Vol. 21.
The ASI Award for Excellence in Indexing recognizes the normally anonymous indexers and the publishers who provide high-quality indexes to serve their readers. The indexer of the winning index receives $1,000 and a certificate. The publisher of the book is also recognized with a certificate. The 2020 award will be presented at the Annual Conference of the American Society for Indexing, April 23–25, in Raleigh, North Carolina.
For the 2020 competition, books with a 2019 copyright date, or those with a 2020 copyright date in distribution prior to December 31, 2019, are eligible (proof of distribution date is required). The judging committee is especially interested in seeing books that presented a challenge to the indexer. Scholarly as well as technical volumes and books on unusual or difficult topics often pose such issues. Trade and other types of books are also welcomed. The committee will be looking at how effectively and creatively the indexer has addressed challenges and maintained high standards of index quality and how well the publisher has typeset the index.
Judging criteria, information on the judging process, FAQs, as well as submission guidelines and form are all available here.
If you have specific questions about the eligibility of an index for the award, please email the Registrar.
Call for 2020 Hines Award Nominations
The 2019 Hines Award for exceptional service to ASI was awarded to Fred Leise. At left, Ina Gravitz, chair and winner of the 2016 Hines Award.
Hines Award nominees should demonstrate an ongoing commitment to ASI and the indexing profession through service as an officer, board member, or in other leadership roles at the national level or within Chapters and SIGs. Other contributions worthy of note include active participation in national and regional conferences, web site management, publications, committees, educational activities, etc.
To submit a nomination, send a letter by email to Meghan Miller Brawley, Hines Committee Chair, documenting the reasons the nominee is worthy of consideration. The nomination letter should be accompanied by letters of recommendation from at least three other individuals who support the nomination. The award will be presented at the ASI national conference in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Rules and procedure for submitting nominations are available on the ASI website here.
ASI Remembers Rachel Rice
Rachel Rice passed away from colon cancer on December 14, 2019, at her home in Brattleboro, Vermont. She was 66 years old.
Rachel started her indexing business in January 1990, writing back-of-the-book indexes; she also provided copyediting services. Some of the books she worked on included subjects about psychology, medicine, health, education, ethics, philosophy, religion, political science, and animals. Rachel presented talks at ASI conferences about indexing and the particular issues that affect self-employed people working in what can often be an isolating job.
Rachel started popular online indexing forums to share knowledge, compare practices, and to help new indexers. The largest of these forums is Indexers Discussion Group (IDG), which has approximately 800 members worldwide.
Rachel had a master's degree in psychology and was a certified ophthalmic technologist.
To honor Rae’s memory, IDG has started a GoFundMe for the Cary Memorial Library in Lexington, Massachusetts, where Rachel first discovered her love of reading. Funds raised will pay for a memorial bench in her name and purchase books on subjects that interested her. Click for more information.
News from Other Organizations
Registration Now Open for 2020 STC Summit
The annual Society for Technical Communication (STC) Summit will be held May 15-18, 2020 in Bellevue, WA. Summit is the premier conference for technical communication education and networking. The conference attracts over 650 attendees and 40 exhibitors during a three-day period and brings together like-minded individuals to grow in their knowledge of the technical communication field. For more information and to register, visit the STC website.
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