It’s November already and probably time to throw on a sweater as you work. Happy Thanksgiving to our readers!
ASI's 2018 Conference Location Announced
ASI Webinars: Building Your Blog—Content Creation to Enhance Your Success
Chapter News — Upcoming Events
SIG News
Spotlight—Heather Hedden
ASI's 2018 Conference Location Announced
The American Society for Indexing is pleased to announce that its 2018 annual conference will be April 26–28 in Cleveland, Ohio.
Currently enjoying a surge in popularity, Cleveland is famously home to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Downtown Cleveland, centered on Public Square, includes a rich range of architecture, from historic to modern. With a record-breaking 18 million visitors in 2016, this lakefront city will surprise you with its beauty and charm.
- Cleveland's theater district Playhouse Square offers the country's largest performing arts center outside of New York City.
- The Cleveland Museum of Art, named the second-best museum in the United States, is ALWAYS free and sits within walking distance of the Cleveland Botanical Garden.
- The Cleveland Orchestra, one of the five American orchestras informally referred to as the "Big Five," plays most of its concerts at historic Severance Hall.
- Downtown you'll find a pedestrian-friendly throughway packed with popular eateries on East Fourth Street.
- If you're a sports lover, you know that Cleveland is home to the Browns, the Cavaliers and the Indians.
Mark the dates now and plan to be there for the ASI Annual Conference April 26-28, 2018, in Cleveland!
ASI Webinars
Building Your Blog—Content Creation to Enhance Your Success
The latest ASI webinar, Meghan Miller Brawley’s Building Your Blog: Content Creation to Enhance Your Success, was held on November 1, 2017.
If you registered for the webinar, you can access the replay here. If you didn’t register, you can still purchase the recording of this webinar and others by visiting the Webinar page.
Chapter News
Upcoming Chapter Events
New England Chapter Fall Meeting
Saturday, December 2, 2017
Hanover, NH
Networking Luncheon 11:30 – 1:00 p.m.
Workshop and Meeting 1:15 – 4:30
The meeting will include a panel discussion “Starting and Maintaining Your Indexing Business” with Joan Shapiro, Sherri Dietrich, and Jennifer Spanier; and a “Knotty Bits Discussion.”
There is no charge for this meeting, but each person is responsible for their own lunch costs if they participate in the informal networking luncheon. RSVP is required for both events. Deadline for RSVP is November 23rd. Check the Chapters and SIGs page for details and contact information.
SIG News
The Digital Publications Indexing SIG has a new webmaster team of Lucie Haskins and Sam Arnold-Boyd. Lucie was part of the ASI webmaster team for many years. Sam was previously responsible for multiple websites when she was a teacher/librarian.
Spotlight
In the Spotlight this month is Heather Hedden, who is the ASI Special Interest Group (SIG) Coordinator. If you would like to be in the Spotlight or nominate someone else, contact the editor, Ælfwine Mischler.
Where do you live now? Where are you originally from?
I live in Carlisle, Massachusetts, just beyond the suburbs of Boston, and this is also where I am from. Eighteen years after moving away for college, graduate school, and work — which took me all the way to the San Francisco Bay area — I returned in 1998 with my husband and two young children to buy a house on the same street where I grew up, a few houses up from my parents, who were still living there.
What is your educational background?
I have a B.A. in Government from Cornell University and an M.A. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. I studied abroad at the American University in Cairo.
What kind of work did you do before you studied indexing?
My first job was as a project coordinator in a translation services agency in Palo Alto, California. Then I worked a year as a journalist with the Middle East Times, in Cairo. I also did freelance magazine article writing.
When did you start indexing? When did you join ASI?
Upon my return to California from Cairo, I was looking for editorial work and in 1993 found a job as an abstractor with the library periodical article database publisher, Information Access Company (IAC). It turned out that abstractors also did indexing, and they intensively trained us indexers on their periodical/database indexing system, methods, and controlled vocabulary use. So, that’s when I started indexing.
IAC had the benefit of paying for one professional association membership, so I then joined ASI. I attended Golden Gate chapter meetings in the 1990s.
In 1995, at IAC, I moved into the group that managed controlled vocabularies, and thus got into thesaurus/taxonomy work, and I kept that job while working remotely from home after we moved to Massachusetts. Meanwhile, IAC was acquired by Gale. But in 2004 I got laid off. So, then I started freelance back-of-the-book indexing (after taking a continuing education indexing course at a local community college taught by Seth Maislin). I eventually found taxonomy work again, and after 10 years got my former senior vocabulary editor job back at Gale (now a part of Cengage learning), working out of its Boston office.
I still do some work related to periodical/database indexing. When I create a new term in the thesaurus, I need to re-index at least some appropriate previously indexed records. Also, sometimes we have rush projects where I also help out with periodical indexing. I may still do freelance book indexing on the side, if the project is small and is not for a competitor of Cengage.
What is the best advantage of ASI membership?
It’s been beneficial for both educational purposes and for networking. For me it has also been very important in my professional development in leadership areas, as I have taken on roles as New England chapter president, SIG manager, and ASI board member. It was also through ASI that I wrote my first book, Indexing Specialties: Websites, which then led to my second book published by Information Today Inc., The Accidental Taxonomist. I’ve also appreciated making friends through ASI.
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