The website of the German Network of Indexers:
http://d-indexer.org/welcome.html
Author: Sanet le Roux
Society of Indexers (SI) new website
The Society of Indexers (SI) (UK) has updated their website. Have a look at https://www.indexers.org.uk/
The directory of indexers that used to be called “Indexers Available”, is now called the “Directory of Professional Indexers”.
Netherlands Indexers Network (NIN)
The website of the Netherlands Indexers Network (NIN):
https://www.indexers.nl/
Indexing Day 2017 #indexday
A social media summary of the celebration of the inaugural #indexday on wakelet:
https://wakelet.com/wake/cac50af0-f04f-4ce9-ae6c-216f8f4733dc
Metaphors for indexing and indexes
Stephen Ullstrom asks the interesting question: what kind of metaphors do you use to describe indexing or indexes?
http://www.stephenullstrom.com/metaphors-for-writing-an-index/
Best Practices for Indexing
The American Society for Indexing has produced a Best Practices for Indexing guide. According to their website the guide “presents an overview of best indexing practices for creating accurate, effective and readable indexes.” To have a look at the guide, go to http://www.asindexing.org/best-indexing-practices/
Adding comments in Adobe Reader
Often while indexing and working with Adobe Reader, I highlight text to indicate a typo or an assumption I made for the index. Usually I want to add a comment to the highlighted text and I always had to double click on the highlight to add a comment. But there is a setting to make a comment box pop up automatically: Click on Edit/Preferences/Commenting and tick ‘Automatically open comment pop-ups for comments other than notes’. A timesaver for sure.
Taxonomy
I recently joined a three-part webinar series on Taxonomy, presented by Heather Hedden. Heather is also the author of “The Accidental Taxonomist” which I have on my bookshelf.
In the first webinar Heather explained taxonomy types and the similarities (and differences) between taxonomies, controlled vocabularies, thesauri and ontologies.
In the second webinar she explained how and from where one should choose the words when creating a taxonomy.
The last webinar was all about software for creating taxonomies, including some live demos.
So what is a taxonomy? I would say it’s a list of words to aid people (or software) to index whatever needs to be indexed. It involves showing the relationships between concepts and therefore shows broader terms, narrower terms and related terms. For example, when you browse for products on an online shop, someone had to have decided which product would be listed where. That someone created a taxonomy.
For more detail and to purchase the webinar go to the American Society for Indexing website: http://www.asindexing.org/online-learning/taxonomy-hedden/
Marnie Lamb talk on indexing – YouTube video posted by the Editors’ Association of Canada (EAC), Toronto branch
At the March 2014 EAC Toronto branch meeting, Marnie Lamb talks to editors about the often mysterious art of indexing. How does an indexer decide which terms to include? What are the mechanics of creating an index? What type of reader uses an index? Lamb discusses these questions in the context of her experience indexing Michael Bryant’s 28 Seconds, the memoir of a well-known — and controversial — Canadian politician.
View the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH3w6V14wyE
The nose of a dog…
Among the many topics discussed at our last Indexers’ Circle meeting was how to best bring across the importance of indexes. Michel Cozien had this gem: “An index is to a book as a nose is to a dog. It helps him find what he is looking for.”