The days are getting cooler and shorter, but not our enthusiasm. We have lots of activities happening in the fall season. Happy Halloween!
ASI Online Learning: Legal Indexing with Lynne Williams
ASI Webinar: Indexing with Index Manager with Pilar Wyman
Upcoming ASI Chapter Events
Chicago-Great Lakes
Recent Chapter Events
Western New York
Pacific Northwest
Recent Award Winners
Spotlight—Shannon Li
ASI Online Learning: Legal Indexing, a Three-Part Series
with Lynne Williams
October 25, November 1, and November 8, 2018
Presented by attorney Lynne Williams, this three-part course is designed for those who are interested in entering the field of legal indexing as well as those who seek to move from indexing of related areas that are not wholly the purview of attorneys into more specialized legal areas. For example, an indexer may have experience working with texts that are often utilized by non-lawyers, such as human relations texts, and would now like to learn to index texts that are highly legally specialized, such as bankruptcy law or constitutional law.
The topic areas include:
- Introduction to legal indexing.
- Types of legal texts an indexer might be asked to index and types of clients.
- Use of proprietary online legal sites, types of locators, metatopics, topical headings and subtopics.
- Planning the structure architecture, including supplemental indexing and periodic re-indexing.
- Standards in legal indexing, special challenges, finding and working with legal clients.
- Reference materials.
Lynne Williams is a practicing attorney who also has a doctorate in Social Psychology. She has taught courses, seminars and workshops on legal topics as well as on the intersection of law and social science. Lynne is an experienced editor and indexer, has published multiple professional articles, and has a small solo law practice in Bar Harbor, Maine.
For more details and to register visit this page.
ASI Webinar: Software Demonstration
Indexing with Index Manager: Indexing and Embedding the Forest and the Trees with Pilar Wyman
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
Writing, editing, embedding index entries—this can be done with professional indexing software! Come see Index-Manager, the all-in-one solution for embedded indexing.
Pilar Wyman will demonstrate how she uses Index-Manager for writing quality indexes, including for providing analysis and headings, subheadings, cross-references, and page ranges. She will also show how she edits her work, and how she exports this work for final embedded publication. Participants will see how to craft and edit both simple and complex index entries, with page ranges and with cross-references. Participants will also see how to export and review embedded indexes.
For more info and to register, click here.
Pilar Wyman, Chief Indexer & Consultant, Wyman Indexing, has been writing indexes and providing related services since 1990. She works in English, Spanish, and French in health, medicine, technology, and other areas of personal interest.
Check out all of ASI’s webinars and online learning options.
Upcoming ASI Chapter Events
The Chicago-Great Lakes Chapter Fall 2018 Workshop
Friday, October 26–Saturday, October 27
Hilton Garden Inn
Des Plaines, Illinois
Sessions include Indexing Names, Genealogical Indexes, How to be the Interface between Publishers and Digital Indexing Techniques, CUP/XML WordEmbed, Brilliantly Structured Indexes Redux. Read more in the June newsletter visit the Chicago/Great Lakes Chapter website for details (including hotel accommodation information) and registration.
Recent Chapter Events
Western New York Chapter Fall Meeting
The Western New York Chapter met in Ithaca, New York, on September 8. The meeting was attended by a small but enthusiastic audience of new and experienced indexers. Pilar Wyman gave a great presentation on embedded indexing. She fielded questions on a wide range of aspects of embedded indexing, including software selection, techniques, and working with publishers. She demonstrated use of Index Manager and shared her resource list. The annual chapter business meeting followed the presentation. Lisa DeBoer (chair) shared updated information on chapter functioning and discussed future plans for meetings.
Pacific Northwest Chapter Fall Meeting
The Pacific Northwest chapter met in Vancouver, Washington, on September 15. Sam Arnold-Boyd, Program Chair for the chapter, was the meeting host who introduced the speakers and kept things running smoothly.
Pilar Wyman gave a talk on digital indexing, with input from Jan Wright. Pilar focused on the big picture issues of this type of indexing and covered the various tools and workflow so that indexers would be better equipped to talk with clients about these issues. They talked about a variety of technology options and how all the pieces fit together. After the presentation, Pilar, Jan, Sam, and Angela Howard took questions and discussed the topic as a panel.
After lunch, tax attorney Greg Bessert presented “The New Tax Law and You,” covering changes made in the new tax legislation that will impact filing 2018 tax returns and other issues. Greg went through drafts of the new forms that are available, pointing out issues applicable to freelancers. For example, some deductions are going away, the age limit on making IRA contributions is going away, and college 529 savings plans will now be able to be used to make student loan payments. There is also a new deduction in the form of 20% of taxable business income which is particularly nice for freelancers like indexers. This session was interactive with questions and discussion as Greg presented.
At the business meeting, volunteers were recognized, and Lisa Fedorak was presented with the Sherry Smith Award for New Indexers. Lisa won $100, to be used towards conference expenses, and will participate in the PNW program team for 2019, helping to plan next fall’s meeting. Congratulations to Lisa!
Disaster planning was the focus of the next session. Carolyn Weaver led a discussion of the various ways people protect against technological issues, crisis mitigation strategies, and estate planning issues (which was made more visible to indexers who were impacted by a member’s sudden death). She presented some information as well as asked people for ideas on how they manage various issues, and she suggested things people could do or think about to make it easier for loved ones to handle their clients and projects if they died or were suddenly incapacitated. Do you have a written plan for how to manage current and upcoming projects and clients and someone who is able to follow it? Have you met with an estate planning attorney to have a will, power of attorney, living will, and related documents drawn up?
Last, Judy Staigmiller led a knotty bits discussion where the whole group discussed how they handle those perpetual issues in indexing such as page ranges broken up by unrelated material, entries ending with a number that just look funny, names, etc. This was a good interactive session to end the day, resulting in an energetic exchange of ideas.
Recent Award Winners
Pacific Northwest chapter of ASI presents new indexer the Sherry Smith Award
The Pacific Northwest chapter of ASI awarded the Sherry Smith Award for New Indexers to Lisa Fedorak from Vancouver, B.C. Lisa completed the Berkeley course this spring and is looking forward to learning more about indexing and growing her business. As part of the award, she will be participating in program planning for the chapter’s next conference.
Congratulations to ASI member Shannon Li, winner of the 2018 Purple Pen Competition
Congratulations to ASI member Shannon Li, who won the 2018 Purple Pen Competition sponsored by the Institute of Certified Indexers. Her index will appear in the book The Politics of Middle English Parables: Fiction, Theology, and Social Practice by Mary Raschko, to be published this fall by Manchester University Press. Commenting in a detailed feedback scoresheet, the judges praised her index for meeting high standards of conceptual analysis and the knowledge she brought to the subject matter. She was awarded $100.
Shannon said that she was excited to work on a project that touched on the very subject areas she had studied while earning a PhD in history from Ohio State University.
Shannon completed the University of California Berkeley indexing course in fall 2017 under the instruction of Heather Ebbs. She lives in Cleveland, Ohio, and has started a freelance indexing business, Li Indexing. In April 2018, she received a partial scholarship to attend the American Society for Indexing (ASI) conference. Shannon is a member of ASI's History/Archaeology SIG and serves as the SIG membership coordinator. (To learn more about Shannon, see the Spotlight feature below.)
Spotlight
In the Spotlight this month is Shannon Li, who won the 2018 Purple Pen Competition for new indexers. Shannon is the membership coordinator of the ASI History/Archaeology SIG. 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? Do you share your home with pets or family?
I currently live in Cleveland, Ohio. I grew up in Wisconsin, though, and I still consider myself a Wisconsinite. I live with my husband, Jimmy, who is finishing his final year of medical school at Case. We’ve adopted two shelter dogs, Yoshi and Teddy.
What is your educational background?
I have a BA in history from Wisconsin Lutheran College, and I completed my MA and PhD in history from Ohio State University. My major field was medieval history, with minor fields in religion and manuscript studies.
Do you have any hobbies, travels, volunteer work, or other interesting things to share?
When I’m not reading for work or leisure, I enjoy playing video games and board games with my husband. On the weekends, we enjoy cooking together, going out to explore new restaurants, and getting some fresh air while hiking. I also have several years of musical training in saxophone and flute, but it’s been a while since I took them out of their cases.
What kind of work did you do before you studied indexing? Are you still doing that or other work in addition to indexing?
I went straight from graduate school to indexing, so this is really my first career. I index full time now, but I’m still working on a translation of a monastic chronicle with my former advisor and a classmate.
When did you start indexing? When did you join ASI?
I took the UC Berkeley indexing course in fall 2017, and then graduated from OSU that same term. I was eager to get started with indexing, so I joined ASI and launched my business (Li Indexing) in January 2018.
For you, what is the best advantage of ASI membership?
I really value the learning and networking experiences available through ASI. I’m always keen to learn more tips and tricks, so it’s been great having access to the publications, webinars, and conferences, and workshops. I’ve also enjoyed getting to know other indexers, and it’s reassuring to be part of a supportive community as a freelancer.
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