See Also—February 2025

We love our volunteers!

ASI News

Submit Hines Award nominations

Devon Thomas, right, was the 2024 Hines Award recipient. Ina Gravitz, the 2016 Hines Award recipient, presented the award.

Nominees should demonstrate a long-term and ongoing commitment through service as an officer, as a board member, or in other leadership roles at the national level and/or within chapters and SIGs. Other contributions worthy of note include active participation in national and regional conferences, website management, publications, committees, educational activities, etc. Past recipients include Devon Thomas, in 2024.

The person submitting the nomination should also solicit letters of recommendation to supplement the nomination—to demonstrate the breadth and length of a nominee's service. Please see full rules and procedures here.

The Hines judging process is confidential, and nominees should not be informed that they have been nominated.

Nominations, or any questions, can be sent to Hines Committee chairperson Fred Leise by the deadline.

ASI webmasters welcome new team members

The ASI Webmasters are excited to introduce new team members: Mary Stevens and Meghan Wagner. Both quickly stepped up to volunteer when the webmaster team sent out a call for new members last month.

Mary started her book indexing business, Look Within Indexing & Editing, in 2023. She holds master’s degrees in Spanish and English. Before indexing, Mary spent thirty-seven years as an instructor, twenty-three of them as a lecturer at SUNY New Paltz. While a generalist in terms of subject matter, she enjoys indexing trade books. She loves dancing and is author of the haiku collection enough light.

Meghan, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, recently completed the ASI Indexing Course and is happy to be starting her indexing career and to join the webmaster team. Her indexing interests include the sciences, health and fitness, and food. In her spare time, she loves to swim and do martial arts.

ASI’s volunteer webmasters alternate one-week shifts as Webmaster of the Week. During their shifts, webmasters address user requests, update pages, and handle basic website maintenance. The new volunteers fill the spots vacated by longtime webmaster Carolyn Weaver, who retired from the team in December, and by Laura Abed, who is stepping down in February. We are grateful to Carolyn and Laura for their service and dedication to ASI.

The webmaster team is looking for additional volunteers to fill in occasionally when the regular webmasters are unavailable. If you have basic WordPress experience and are looking for a way to volunteer with ASI, email the team.

— Webmasters team

ASI membership: Did you know?

The ASI website has a robust list of equity, diversity and inclusion resources. They are helpful in deepening knowledge and understanding of gendered language, use of disability terminology, and indexing names correctly.

Please check out this resource and more on ASI's Reference Shelf.

Chapters and SIGS

Gardening/Environmental SIG has new leader

Lisa Ryan is the new leader of the Gardening/Environmental Studies Special Interest Group.

This SIG is an alliance of trained, skilled indexers with education, background, and experience in numerous subject specialties including botany, gardening, landscape design, agriculture, ecology, geography, natural history, wildlife conservation, and more.
Full information is available on the SIG's website. New members are welcome.

Information about all of ASI’s SIGs is available here.

Digital Publications SIG to meet

The Digital Publications Indexing Special Interest Group will meet online on February 6, 2025, at 9:30 a.m. Pacific time/12:30 p.m. Eastern time. This is an opportunity for members to catch up with each other and discuss developments in indexing digital publications.

Visit DPI’s website for more information about the group.

Please share news about your SIG or ASI chapter with See Also.

Associated Industry News

South African indexing group incorporates into editors' guild

The Association of Southern African Indexers and Bibliographers (ASAIB) is incorporating into the Professional Editors’ Guild (PEG). Once complete, ASAIB, which has existed for thirty years, will no longer exist, according to a press release.

There is an arrangement with the Editors' Guild for already paid ASAIB memberships, and one member of the ASAIB Executive Committee will join the PEG Executive Committee.

Future of the Society for Technical Communication (STC)

The Society for Technical Communication (STC) has announced it is permanently ceasing operations, in the wake of financial difficulties and falling membership. The Board of Directors approved a motion to file Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

STC is a Reston, Virginia-based association focused on advancing technical communication by providing education, accredited certification, and other opportunities to promote industry best practices.

Business and Marketing

Avoid the drain of browser clutter

Having too many tabs open on your computer can put a strain on its central processing unit, causing application problems and computer crashes, as explained here.

Browser clutter could also increase a user's stress level and frustration, according to research cited by PC World.

"Too many" is relative and depends on factors such as your computer's memory, the websites' content, and the browser you use. But, in general, fewer is better.

Chrome has a few features that can help, including a tab organizer to group sites together, and an alert that will let you know when a particular tab is affecting memory and performance, as PC Magazine explains.

Spotlight on Terrill Schrock

This month's Spotlight is on Terrill Schrock Terrill Schrock, an indexer with the Florida Legislature.

If you would like to be in the Spotlight, or would like to nominate someone for it, please contact Laurie Hlavaty.

Where do you live now? Where are you originally from? Do you share your home with pets or family?

For the last eight years, I’ve lived in Tallahassee, the densely forested capital of Florida and site of three universities. I share a home with my family (partner and two teenage girls) and our beloved dog, Oliver, a.k.a. Mr. Wiggles (mostly mini poodle with a smattering of golden retriever and bichon frisé). My birthplace is Atmore, Alabama, a small railroad town between Mobile and Montgomery and home to the Poarch Creek Nation, to which my Mennonite grandparents went as missionaries in the early 1960s. Eight years in one place is unusual for me: If I count the places I’ve lived for one month or longer, I have moved sixty-two times.

What is your educational background?

Between my second and third year of college, I embarked on a trip that took me through Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, France, and England. Inspired by my experiences there, I went on to finish my BA degree with a major in French and a minor in Russian. Then, in preparation for a career in missionary linguistics, I earned an MA in Applied Linguistics with emphases in Bible translation and descriptive linguistics. I vowed never to set foot in a classroom again, which I assumed meant no more formal education. However, after several years working on the Ik language of northeast Uganda, I completed a PhD program at Leiden University in the Netherlands that involved no classes—only research and writing.

Do you have any hobbies, travels, volunteer work, or other interesting things to share?

I like to recreate myself by kayaking or paddle-boarding on this region’s beautiful spring-fed rivers. Recently, I joined my local chapter of the Florida Trail Association and have been enjoying weekend hiking trips with groups of ten to twenty. Regular time in nature is an essential remedy for me, for the soul-stunting hours I spend in a concrete box staring at glass screens. This is my first office job, and I have both got used to it and not got used to it at all!

What kind of work did you do before you studied indexing? Are you still doing that or other work in addition to indexing?

Immediately before indexing, I was washing dishes in a local restaurant. Before that, I was working on a horse farm and before that, selling fences. My first career, however, was as a linguist doing language research and development among the Ik people of Uganda (made infamous by the anthropology classic The Mountain People). I still dabble in linguistics as a hobby, mostly in the etymology of Ik and other East African languages. In addition to legislative indexing, I manage the legislature’s Law Book Services Office that handles the publication, sale, and distribution of the Laws of Florida and the Florida Statutes.

What is a favorite strategy to help motivate or inspire when you are feeling stuck during a work project?

The legislative bills I index range from one page to over two hundred pages. Typically, when I get stuck on one, I switch to a short and/or easy bill and knock it out, giving myself a much-needed shot of dopamine. Other times, I’ll let the offending bill sit overnight.

When did you start indexing? When did you join ASI?

Technically, I started indexing when I did the index for my doctoral dissertation. If I recall correctly, I built it manually in Word, not even knowing about Word’s indexing function. But my work in the indexing profession began in January 2023, when I was hired as a legislative indexer for the Florida Legislature. My colleague and I joined ASI with an institutional membership in September 2024.

For you, what is the best advantage of ASI membership?

The best advantage I’ve found to ASI membership so far is the opportunity to network with other indexers.

Items to be considered for the See Also newsletter should be submitted by the 15th of the month before publication. For March 2025 issue, please email SeeAlsoEditor@asindexing.org by February 15. Thank you.