2023 in Review
A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered.”
— C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet
Indexing
I recently published a Substack and blog post that provided a listing of all the books I indexed in 2023.
The list provides the title/author information of my six published jobs of 2023, links to respective publisher pages with other book information, and brief abstracts of each book. It also includes the four book indexes I have done that are available to view or download on my website, indexes that I completed and am providing as examples of my work.
Professional Development & Conferences
American Society for Indexing (ASI) Courses & Webinars
This three-part course with Theresa Duran provided a comprehensive guide to indexing art books.
I had two motives for attending this course: to gain insights on indexing works in which images are the things being indexed, for a non-book indexing project that I was beginning work on; and to learn about treatment of illustrations and titles, since many books include them.
The course description makes an important point, that “the indexer must understand the conventions pertaining to specific types of artworks and the expectations that clients might have about the indexing of images.”
This is a Webinar that I signed up for in 2023 but it will take place in January 2024. The webinar will explore techniques for improving efficiency in the indexing process as well as describe some little-used tools and functions that even experienced indexers may be unfamiliar with.
Embedded Indexing
One of the indexes available via my website is my first embedded indexing project, for which I used a combination of Cindex, Kerntiff Publishing Systems scripts, and Adobe InDesign, to provide my client with the desired e-book index.
Before starting on this project, I had time to review an ASI Webinar I had previously attended:
In this webinar, Jan Wright provides the intricate details of communicating with clients about file management and project schedules, discusses timelines for embedded indexing work, and provides an overview of what embedding an index involves. She covers critical questions that indexers should ask clients before starting work and discusses some guidance for indexers to provide their clients upon file submission. She also reviews some advantages and drawbacks of embedded indexing.
The webinar itself as well as the handouts, along with the Kerntiff Publishing Systems tools, contributed to the successful completion of the embedded indexing project.
ASI 2023 Conference
ASI’s 2023 conference focused on the past, present, and future of indexing.
Some sessions I attended were:
Friday’s keynote presentation, “Metadata at the New York Times: Organizing and Leveraging News Content from 1851-Today,” by Jennifer Parrucci.
“The History of Stoplists: Lists of Words Not Indexed,” by Bella Hass Weinberg.
Saturday’s keynote, “Changing Industries From the Inside: Learning from the HarperCollins strike,” by Olga Brudastova.
“New A.I. Tools and Indexing: Do We Welcome Our New Robot Overlords?” by John Magee.
“E-book Indexes: More Than Meets the Eye,” by Mary Coe.
Publications
Abstracting
In March, I published an announcement: I was awarded a contract to be a part-time abstracter for the NCJRS Virtual Library, which provides public access to more than 230,000 documents.
I am very fortunate to have this opportunity, and doubly fortunate that the abstracting work is flexible so I can budget my time appropriately, to allow for other projects that also require focused attention.
Thank You
Thus ends my report on the highlights of 2023 at VFJ Indexing & Word Services.
Cheers to a happy, healthy, and project-filled 2024.
