See Also—January 2025

ASI News
—ASI announces winners of 2024 Indexing Awards
—Fill upcoming vacancies on ASI board
—Join team keeping ASI website current
—ASI announces updated rates for 2025
—Key Words: Indexing in another language
—"All About Indexing," on working safely and productively
—Update ASI logo on website, in correspondence
Chapters and SIGS
—History/Archaeology Special Interest Group meets
—Joining a chapter
Associated Industry News
—Submit indexes for Canadian award by March 14
Business and Marketing
—Get organized for taxes
Spotlight on Bill Wheaton

ASI News

ASI announces winners of 2024 Indexing Awards

The American Society for Indexing has announced the winners of the 2024 Indexing Awards. In the Trade category, Jan Wright won for Shift Happens: A Book about Keyboards, published by Aresluna, LLC. In the Scholarly/Technical category, Enid Zafran won for Looking for Other Worlds: Black Feminism and Haitian Fiction, published by University of Virginia Press. Read more about the winning entries here. Watch for more details in a future issue of Key Words.

Fill upcoming vacancies on ASI board

ASI’s Nominating Committee welcomes input in filling three vacant seats on the 2025–2026 Board of Directors. Candidates are needed for the following positions:

• president-elect
• two directors-at-large

The president-elect attends all board meetings, serves as president the following year (2026–2027), and then as immediate past president, chairing the Nominating Committee—a three-year commitment in all. Directors serve a three-year term.

Responsibilities of all offices include participating in quarterly board meetings, acting as a liaison between the board and their assigned ASI committee(s), and contributing to other organizational goals and projects of interest. Full details on officer qualifications and duties are in the ASI bylaws

Committee chair Theresa Duran welcomes your suggestions and input. Please contact her by January 10, 2025.

Join team keeping ASI website current

Would you like to help keep ASI's site up to date? The webmaster team is looking for volunteers. This is a good opportunity for people who like tinkering with websites and for newer indexers to get involved behind the scenes and contribute to ASI’s mission.

This committee works as a team, with each member being on-call approximately one week of each month. The webmaster-of-the-week (WoW) responds to emails received in the webmaster mailbox, makes requested updates to the website as needed, and refers questions to other responsible parties, if required. At the end of the week, a brief report is sent to the other team members.

If you are interested or have questions, please contact the team.

ASI announces updated rates for 2025

ASI’s board meets annually to review the association’s financial picture and look to the future. Expenses have increased for ASI, as they have for other associations. In accordance with its fiduciary responsibility, the board has implemented a rate adjustment. Membership for individuals is now $249. Organizational membership is $549. Read about the benefits of membership here. If you have questions, please contact ASI Treasurer Cheryl Lenser or executive director Gwen Henson.

Key Words: Indexing in another language

The winter issue of Key Words is all about indexing in other languages, from how-tos to where indexers have used their multilingual skills. Index Zero looks at open source software, and Heather Pendley reviews the changes to the indexing chapter of the recently published 18th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. Look for ASI's quarterly journal soon.

"All About Indexing," on working safely and productively

ASI's winter event—"All About Indexing: From Thesauri to AI, Tools and Tips for Working Smarter"—brought together dozens of indexers, who left with recommendations and resources on ways to work more efficiently and run a business more securely.
The event in December included:

• A keynote address on "Artificial intelligence and the Future of Publishing" by author and blogger Thad McIlroy. He explored how artificial intelligence impacts the processes and jobs in the publishing industry—including indexing. He showed the results of experimenting with an AI tool to produce a partial index, highlighting the pros and cons of the results. While Thad does believe that eventually AI will affect the demand for professional indexing, the prognosis is not clear at this time.
• A detailed overview of the organization and workflow of the United Nations Bibliographic Information System (UNBIS Thesaurus), by metadata librarian Susan Hussein.
• A demonstration of TExtract 11 features, by developer Harry Bego. This software is described as "semi-automatic indexing," a combination of automated and manual indexing where the user is in complete control. Harry said TExtract is an "old-school" AI tool, in comparison to modern artificial intelligence tools.
• Cybersecurity expert and retired FBI special agent John Iannarelli potently illustrated the ways we are vulnerable to online fraud and offered practical steps to protect sensitive personal and professional data. He suggested regular monitoring of computers and mobile devices to guard against identity theft, phishing schemes, ransomware attacks and more.
• Three indexers shared a glimpse into how they work, using peripheral tools to improve productivity, with Jolanta Komornicka demonstrating the role of a tablet and apps for markup and editing; Rudy Leon's use of programmable mice and keypads to execute macros; and Altholl Robertson's use of speech recognition software in creating indexes.

Replays of ASI's winter special event are available for registrants for a year.

Update ASI logo on website, in correspondence

The American Society for Indexing strives to increase the visibility of the association and the indexing industry. Members of ASI can highlight their professionalism and assure their clients they are dedicated participants in the industry by displaying the 2025 ASI Member icon. The membership icon can be used in an email signature, added to websites, and featured on invoices and business cards. A graphic file of the icon can be downloaded here.

Chapters and SIGS

History/Archaeology Special Interest Group meets

The History/Archaeology Special Interest Group will hold an online social gathering on Friday, January 31. Organizers will provide the time and Zoom link later this month.

Visit the H/A SIG's website for information about joining, or check out SIG's discussion group. Email Vickie Jacobs with questions.

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

Joining a chapter

ASI members can join a chapter at any time, but your first chapter is free with membership. Select it at the time of your annual renewal. Additional chapter memberships are $14 per year.

Information about all of ASI's chapters is available here.

Associated Industry News

Submit indexes for Canadian award by March 14

Indexes published in 2023 and 2024 are welcome for consideration for ISC/SCI's Ewart-Daveluy Award for Excellence in Indexing 2025. The submission deadline is March 14, 2025.

The Canadian indexing society contest is open to Canadian citizens or permanent residents as well as those who were ISC/SCI members at the time they created the index. There is no restriction on the subject matter or genre of the book. The winner and up to three runners-up receive feedback from experienced indexers.

There is a $30 submission fee. Full guidelines are available here.

Business and Marketing

Get organized for taxes

With 2024 in the rear-view mirror, it's time to look ahead … and mark your calendar for estimated tax payments, especially pertinent for self-employed indexers.

Fourth-quarter 2024 estimated taxes—for earnings from September 1 to December 31, 2024— are due January 15, 2025 (If you are filing your taxes by January 31, you can skip this estimated payment).

Estimated payments in 2025:

• First quarter, for earnings from January 1 to March 31, 2025: due April 15.
• Second quarter, for earnings from April 1 to May 31, 2025: due June 17.
• Third quarter, for earnings from June 1 to August 31, 2025: due September 16.
• Fourth quarter, for earnings from September 1 to December 31, 2025: due January 15, 2026.

Check out the IRS's frequently asked questions on estimated tax payments.

Spotlight on Bill Wheaton

This month's Spotlight is on Bill Wheaton, owner of Bill Wheaton Indexing.

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?

I'm originally from the Boston area. I've lived in North Carolina for the past 31 years.

What is your educational background?

I'm a product of a liberal arts education. I went to Dartmouth College for a bachelor's degree in geography. Then, in midlife, I earned a master's degree in Liberal Studies from Duke University.

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

I'm not happy unless I have a new topic to explore and learn about. I have a do-it-yourself ethos. Since retiring, I became coffee-obsessed and now roast my own coffee, re-built the deck on my house, got my amateur radio license. The list goes on. I am also one of those weirdos who likes Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. As a side project, I created a gazetteer for Moby-Dick. The gazetteer is on the web, and I'm working on a print version of it that I will self-publish soon. I volunteer for Habitat for Humanity building houses, and I donate platelets whenever the mobile unit is in my area. I read a lot.

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

My degree in geography, to my utter surprise, enabled me to get in on the early days of geographic information systems (what would now be called geospatial sciences). I spent my career doing geographic analysis and mapping. I was fortunate enough to work at a large research company having diverse research domains, so I got to learn about and support work in many fields, including water quality, nuclear accidents, children's health, and criminology.

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

So far, I have not had any issues of this sort, but I'm still early in my indexing career, so I'm sure some difficult jobs will come my way! When I have a project, I get right to work on it first thing in the morning just about every day. An indexing project takes over my life while I'm working on it.

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

A friend of mine thought indexing would be a good fit for me, based on my interests and temperament. He was right. I started learning indexing in the summer of 2023. I read everything I could find and did three training indexes on my own to get some basic experience before I started looking for work. I joined ASI in the fall of 2023 and got my profile set up at that time. I got a couple of jobs pretty quickly and was able to start marketing my experience with completed indexing projects right away. I built my website a few months ago, and I've gotten queries through that as well as through the ASI Indexer Locator.

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

There are so many benefits to ASI membership, it's hard to choose one. The ASIndexing forum has been valuable to me, both for asking questions and to just follow along, as indexers deal with the myriad problems and issues in indexing. I plan to watch a couple of the webinars in the next few weeks. The indexes to the Key Words journal are a fantastic value to the community. Those who developed them deserve huge thanks, especially from novice indexers like me.

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