See Also—November 2018

ASI Announces 2019 Annual Conference Location
ASI Online Learning: Legal Indexing with Lynne Williams, JD
ASI Webinar: Indexing with Index Manager with Pilar Wyman
Happy birthday to ASI! Celebrating 50 Years
Recent Chapter Events
 Chicago/Great Lakes Fall Workshop
 Pacific Northwest Elections
Spotlight—Carolyn Weaver

2019 Annual Conference

Mark your calendar! The American Society for Indexing 2019 conference will be in sunny Scottsdale, Arizona on April 25–27, 2019. We hope you will join indexers from across the country who will gather for Bloom in the Desert.

Come in a day early or stay over. In Scottsdale and neighboring Phoenix you'll discover Heard Museum, world renown for its Native American artifacts; Phoenix Art Museum; Arizona Science Center; Desert Botanical Gardens; Musical Instrument Museum; and much more.

Stay tuned for more details coming soon!

ASI Online Learning: Legal Indexing, a Three-Part Series
with Lynne Williams

The last session of Legal Indexing, a three-part series with Lynne Williams, JD, will be held November 8, 2018.

You can still get the early rate for this course if you register by November 8. Even if you missed the live sessions, the course is available on demand in online replays. Click here for details and registration.

ASI Webinar: Indexing with Index Manager with Pilar Wyman

Indexing with Index Manager: Indexing and Embedding the Forest and the Trees, a software demonstration webinar by Pilar Wyman, was presented on October 30. If you preregistered for the webinar, you can replay it any time. And if you did not preregister, you can still click to get the webinar.

Check out all of ASI’s webinars and online learning options.

Happy birthday to ASI! Celebrating 50 Years

This month the American Society for Indexing celebrates 50 years since its founding. The first formal board meeting of ASI was convened by Ted Hines on November 18, 1968, which is ASI’s birthday and official holiday.*

In 50 years, a lot has changed in the publishing industry, even the methods indexers use. However, indexers still create vital access to information, the map that enables readers and researchers to find their way to what they are seeking. As we move forward into the coming 50 years, the all-important role indexers play can only expand. Lift a glass of your favorite beverage, and together let’s celebrate 50 years of ASI!

*To read more about the history of ASI, read "A Brief History of the American Society for Indexing" by Peter Rooney, ASI’s Archivist.

Recent Chapter Events

The Chicago-Great Lakes Chapter Fall 2018 Workshop

The Chicago/Great Lakes Chapter Fall Workshop, held at the Hilton Garden Inn in Des Plaines, Illinois, opened with a welcome reception on the evening of Thursday, October 25, followed by two days of presentations.

On Friday, Enid Zafran gave a full-day presentation on the deceptively problematic topic of indexing names. She delved into eleven separate issues regarding names, including specific strategies to aid in decision-making, how to deal with co-authors, names from reference sources, force-sorting issues, and combining authors with their titles.

On Saturday, our featured speaker Matt Rutherford, Curator of Genealogy and Local History at Chicago’s Newberry Library, gave an account of genealogical research using his family name as an example. This was followed by an analysis of indexes of some of these research materials.

Terry Casey’s presentation focused on ways that publishers and indexers might work with developers of digital and embedded texts to enhance indexing techniques in these publications.

Jim Fuhr demonstrated James Lamb’s CUP/XML WordEmbed, emphasizing the distinct user-friendliness of that program.

Fred Leise presented the third iteration in the development of his reconsideration of the basic concept of index structure. Rather than starting on page one and moving forward sequentially, he focuses on broad topics found in the table of contents and subchapters as starting points. From there he extracts main headings, then proceeds toward increasing granularity.

Following each days’ presentations, a dinner was held, with lively and convivial conversation.
The conference, judging by attendees’ comments, seemed to be well received. Jim Fuhr and Denise Alberts, co-chairs of the Chicago/Great Lakes Committee, said they thoroughly enjoyed this opportunity to interact with their colleagues and were pleased with the turnout, which represented eleven states. In addition to five speakers and two co-chairs, the participants included Marilyn Augst, Susan Bruck, Eve Morey Christensen, D’Ann Hamilton-White, Sandra Judd, Thomas Kiefer, Joy Dean Lee, Shannon Li, Linda Presto, Ben Reike, Maria Sosnowski, Laura Stempel, Mya Wilson, and Elise Ann Wormuth.

Pacific Northwest Chapter Elections

The Pacific Northwest announced the results of the election for chapter lead officers for 2019.
By unanimous vote, the 2019 officers will be:

Judy Staigmiller, Chair
Angela Howard, Treasurer
Sam Arnold-Boyd, Program Chair

Congratulations to all three and thank you for serving!

Spotlight

In the Spotlight this month is Carolyn Weaver, who has served as ASI President (2007–2008) and Treasurer, and three terms as President of the Pacific Northwest Chapter. She currently serves as ASI Co-Webmaster and a grader for ASI’s Training in Indexing Course. In 2015 she received the Theodore C. Hines Award for exceptional service to ASI.
If you would like to be in the Spotlight or nominate someone, contact the editor, Ælfwine Mischler.

Where do you live now? Where are you originally from? Do you share your home with pets or family?
My husband and I live in Bellevue, Washington. We moved here from Omaha in 1986, driving cross-country with two young daughters, two dogs, two cats, and a tent trailer that we lived in until our furniture was delivered. We still live in the house that we bought 31 years ago (couldn’t afford to buy it today!), and the tent trailer has since been replaced by a Fifth Wheel RV that is our home away from home during the summer. My current office assistant is JayCee, a two-year-old Catahoula/lab mix who has assigned himself the task of making sure that I get plenty of exercise every day.

What is your educational background?
My undergraduate degree in English and Psychology is from Pasadena College. I also have an MLS degree from the University of Chicago, and an MPA (public administration) degree from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, which was coincidentally received exactly 20 years after my library degree.

Do you have any hobbies, travels, volunteer work, or other interesting things to share?
We started RVing in the late 1970s and through the years have visited just about every national park west of the Mississippi and most of the state parks in the Pacific Northwest. In recent years we’ve also indulged in a number of tours and riverboat cruises through Europe, visiting most of the Western European countries while leaving the driving to others. Other interests include genealogy (currently have over 11,000 names in the family tree), musical theater, prowling antique stores, and singing in a local community choir.

What kind of work did you do before you studied indexing? Are you still doing that or other work in addition to indexing?
I was an academic medical librarian for 35 years. My first medical library job was as a reference librarian / MEDLARS searcher at the Midwest Regional Medical Library Program in Chicago. At that time, the National Library of Medicine (owner of the MEDLARS database that later evolved into MEDLINE) required that all searchers attend a 6-month search training program, half of which was spent learning to index journals. That was my original introduction to indexing.

Three years later, at the University of Nebraska Medical Center Library in Omaha, I became the first MEDLINE searcher in the state (before users were allowed to do their own searches). I also put my NLM indexing training to use by volunteering (for pay) to index a medical journal published on campus, since I had no idea how to find an indexer for the client.

When did you start indexing? When did you join ASI?
In 1991 I was working at the University of Washington Health Sciences Library in Seattle. We had two daughters approaching college age, insufficient savings to cover their tuition, and no desire to take out a second mortgage on the house. So I decided that indexing was a more attractive option than flipping hamburgers to generate additional income. I checked out every book on indexing in the University of Washington Libraries, taught myself indexing, and launched a nine-year career as a moonlighting indexer. I made the switch to full-time indexing in 2000, after my younger daughter graduated from college.

I joined ASI in 1993. Indexers in the Pacific Northwest were few and far between then, so I was excited to see a notice from Elspeth Pope in the ASI newsletter asking if anyone in Washington or Oregon was interested in getting together to discuss indexing. I called Elspeth, and we started hosting local meetings that eventually led to the formation of the Pacific Northwest Chapter.

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

1. Indexer Locator. I’ve been listed in ASI’s marketing directory (under the current and previous names) ever since I joined, and it has been a rare year that I haven’t gotten at least one job that repaid the cost of my listing.
2. Education. As a self-taught indexer in the mid-90s, I needed all the help I could get in perfecting my craft. I got that help through KeyWords, ASI publications, and national and chapter presentations. And today ASI has even more to offer both new and experienced indexers through the Training in Indexing Course and Webinars/Online Learning programs.
3. Networking. During a presentation I gave at an ASI conference several years ago, a new indexer asked me why I would refer work to my competitors. My reply: “They’re not my competitors; they’re my backup system!”