Hi! Since this is my last column, I hope by now I’ve gotten some of you interested enough to think about indexing professionally. You’ve taken a course, joined a few groups of like-minded freelancers, and brushed up on your M&M-sorting skills. Now what? It’s time to learn about how to get clients.First of all, who are the clients you are looking to market towards? As I said in my first column about my own freelancing business, my clients are either authors or publishers. (Clients can include others, such as book packagers—people who navigate the creation of self-published books using the help of freelance editors, indexers, typesetters, etc.—but for the sake of simplicity for this discussion I’m going to focus just on authors and publishers.)
Some authors find me through their publishers, and some publishers find me through their authors—which brings me to the best method of getting clients: networking. Once you make yourself known in the publishing world as an indexer, and most importantly, as a great indexer, people will hear about you and the contacts will come. Another great source of referrals comes from fellow indexers, which is where your participation in indexing or publishing societies and on those e-mail lists comes in handy. I was very lucky to get quite a few new clients in the beginning of my freelance career on the referrals of the very small group of indexers out there specializing in Judaica, and some of those have led to regular work.
But in the beginning before you are established and known in the indexing and publishing worlds to get these referrals (very small worlds, I might add!), direct marketing is what you need to focus on to get your new business going. These days, when most publishers have websites and many of them would rather receive communication via e-mail than postal, the enormous task of going through a seemingly endless list of publishers is made much easier than it once must have been.
The gold standard guide to publishers is, in my opinion, a giant book called Literary Marketplace which is updated once a year and available in most libraries—they also have a website which provides partial publisher information for free and full information if you subscribe (the website is www.literarymarketplace.com). There are thousands of publishers on this list and it can be mighty hard to keep track of them all! So here’s where the organizational skills that make you such a great indexer come in handy.
I keep a file in Word with the name of each publisher and divide the list into categories: publishers I haven’t contacted yet, contacted but no response yet, contacted and interested in getting more information from me, contacted but don’t need my services or publishers that specialize in topics I’m not familiar with, and YAY!! They liked me and sent me work! Your initial contact with a potential client doesn’t need to be long or detailed; just a quick e-mail (or phone call if you’re more comfortable with that) asking if they use freelancers and who you can send more information to will do. The “no/wrong specializations” list gets kept so I remember not to repeat my inquiries to them, the “no response” list gets re-contacted after about six months in case my e-mail got lost in cyberspace (and it happens more often than I’d like!), the “send more information” list brings me to my next topic, which is methods of marketing, and as for the “haven’t contacted yet” list, I can tell you that after being in business for a year I still have a long way to go on that one, thanks to my days more often being spent these days focusing on indexing jobs for the YAY!! list than on new marketing! But even on weeks that I have spent mostly on jobs, I still make sure to carve out some time one day a week to either contact prospective clients or follow up with existing ones or publishers who I have sent my information to a while ago. This ensures that you won’t run out of work and that your client base will continue to grow.
In the beginning, however, most of your time will be spent marketing in hopes of landing that first client who will hopefully provide you with regular work. No marketing, no clients—as you probably know already, it takes a lot of self-motivation to be successful at freelancing! So, how do you wow those publishers who want to hear more about your business so that they end up on the YAY!! list? The two main marketing tools I think are essential to be able to provide publishers with are a polished resume and a business website.
Your resume should highlight your experience relating to why you would make a great indexer, as well as any subject-related experience that would make you a good fit for a particular publisher specialty. My resume is set up CV-style, summarizing my background in publishing and librarianship and how it led to indexing, skills that help me in my job, work experience, education and professional memberships. I am not often asked for a cover letter for “applying” to publishers’ freelance lists via e-mail, so my resume really has to shine!
Branding yourself through your website is also essential in these days of internet-based business. Setting up a business website can be easier than you think—no learning HTML or web design needed anymore. My website (check it out at www.hurwitz-indexing.com) contains five pages:
* Home Page: summary of what Hurwitz Indexing does and why indexes are important.
* About Us: contains a modified version of my resume.
* Rates and References: just that!
* Samples and Accolades: I’ll talk about that in a minute.
* Contact Me: E-mail and mailing addresses (I no longer list my phone number due to the abundance of “phone spam”, which is even more annoying than e-mail spam!)
One of the main things that publishers look for when thinking about using a new freelancer is what kind of experience they have and what their current clients think of them. I keep a list on my Samples and Accolades page of every book I have worked on as a freelancer, divided into two categories: books I have indexed and books I have done other editorial work on, which includes editing, proofreading and bibliography creation. By the time this column is published, I will have a category for writing credits as well! As each book is published, I change the title of the book in the list to a link which goes to the book on the publisher’s website, Amazon.com or another website where more information about it can be found. While you are building up your portfolio, samples made up of books you have worked on for practice works just as well. Another great way to gain experience is to find and do a few jobs pro bono. One of the first books I indexed was a volunteer job for the Editorial Freelancers’ Association—it gave me great experience and I was glad to have done them a favor!
My accolades list is comprised of quotes I have received from my publishers and authors whenever they are particularly pleased with my work. Not only is it great for potential clients to see this, but it is great to have something to look at times when I feel frustrated or otherwise underappreciated. A quick glance at this list puts all those worries to rest! This is a great tip I received in library school which works in pretty much any profession, not just in freelancing.
The next question that is sure to come up when starting a new business is how to price your services. This is also something that is based on experience, both experience in the service you are providing and business experience—knowing how to negotiate fees with clients without going too low or too high. (I can’t resist plugging Elephant here for the great job they do making sure its members participate in its freelance Salary/Rate Survey so it is known what the going rates are!) In my experience, I have found that I have had to go about pricing with each client separately and the rates I quote are merely starting points for negotiations. Some clients or potential clients say my rates are too high, some admit to taking advantage of my low rates, and still others have a policy of setting the rates and not the freelancers. There is also the matter of not every job taking the same amount of time to complete—I’ve had $1200 jobs that took me three weeks and $1200 jobs that took me two days, with the first-case publisher offering more per page—so a lower per-page rate does not always equal lower pay when considering the complexity of each book. So this is not a black or white matter, but remember that if you have confidence in your product and your worth, so will your client.
Once you get clients, developing a good relationship with them is the key to ensuring that they continue to send them work. I have found more than once, especially since the index is usually the last part of a book to be written and usually the indexer is the one whose time is compromised, that being able to help clients out in a jam will brand you their best friend for life. This is one reason why I am pretty much glued to my e-mail box; my clients can count on me, but at the same time make sure to let them know when I am not available to take on new jobs. I try not to overbook myself in order to be able to take on emergency jobs, as they do come up fairly often and once again, it takes those excellent organizational skills that make you a great indexer to deal with the inevitable delays that come with book production. And if you end up with some free time while waiting, you always have that handy-dandy neverending list of publishers to market towards!
That’s about all for my column on All About Indexing—hope you learned something from it, and feel free to contact me at shoshana@hurwitz-indexing.com if you want to chat some more about indexing!
Shoshana Hurwitz
Hurwitz Indexing
Showing posts with label Elephant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Elephant. Show all posts
Sunday, November 23, 2008
All About Indexing #7: Starting an Indexing Business, Part 1
Hi, everyone! For my last two columns, I would like to talk about how one goes about starting an indexing business. I believe that the skills needed to become a good indexer are partly innate and partly acquired. My indexing teacher, the great Kari Kells, says in the introduction to her Basic Indexing Tutorial that on her first day of an indexing class she took in library school, she knew she had found the perfect career as her teacher described the way she had always automatically sorted her photos by category, and Kari nodding and smiling as she recalled her own automatic sorting of M&Ms by color, and music by genre, then alphabetical, then chronological, etc. (Anyone out there nodding and smiling at this?)
As you could probably tell from reading my own introduction, from the first day of Kari’s instruction with me I knew I felt the same way. As a child I automatically sorted my comic books by color on my shelf and liked to create graphs based on which of my friends I had shared my candy with that month, and how many pieces went to each friend! (Looking back, I am quite certain they thought I was headed for the loony bin!) But loony as I was, it was great practice for my eventual career choice, and as I watched my daughters, who are now 6 and 3, automatically sort their M&Ms during snack time today (complete with heavy trading negotiations to be “fair” on color distribution!), am convinced that this trait is not only innate but hereditary! I later learned that my love of language and books, organization skills and obsessive attention to detail were just the skills needed to be a great indexer, and my self-discipline, preference of working alone and proficiency with computers were just the skills needed to be a great freelancer! Although many indexers have a background in English and many are part-time or former librarians, there are plenty also who arrive at indexing as a career in other ways.
Taking a course in indexing only sharpens these innate skills. Many library science graduate schools offer courses in indexing (which may explain why indexing and librarianship careers often intertwine), but in my particular case, this class was never offered in the three years it took me to complete my degree. The standard national indexing courses in America are Basic and Applied Indexing, which are given by the United States Department of Agriculture, and the American Society of Indexers also offers a course in indexing. As a teacher both of the USDA courses and of her own self-paced, e-mail-based correspondence course offered as part of her business, Index West (www.indexw.com), which is the one I took and something that can be taken by anyone in the world (that means you, interested-in-indexing Israelis!), Kari Kells was the ideal choice when picking someone to chat with about the various indexing courses out there.
Shoshana: Hi, Kari! When did indexing courses come onto the scene and in what capacity?
Kari: I’m not sure when the first indexing course was taught, but I do know that the first indexing correspondence course in the U.S. was the Basic course offered by the USDA, which was created in 1984. Starting a few years ago, new correspondence courses have emerged in the U.S.
Shoshana: How many indexers do you think are self-taught?
Kari: A 2004 ASI survey states that 33% of its members are self-taught.
Shoshana: Of course, not all American indexers are ASI members, but that’s probably a good guess. Very interesting!
The second thing that is very helpful to have as a professional indexer, especially as a freelancer, is a membership in an indexing society. This is especially useful because indexing is such a solitary profession, and the nature of the internet has made it so much easier these days for indexers to keep in touch with each other and exchange professional advice and referrals. Also, these societies have Special Interest Groups, which bring together indexers who specialize in a variety of topics.
The major indexing societies are:
* American Society of Indexers: www.asindexing.org
* Indexing Society of Canada: www.indexers.ca
* Australian and New Zealand Society of Indexers: www.aussi.org
* Society of Indexers [Britain and Ireland]: www.indexers.org.uk
For indexers who live in countries such as Israel, who do not yet have an indexing organization to call their own, there are other options out there to connect and network with other indexers (besides the obvious, which is to join Elephant and chat with me!). One of these options is joining the Editorial Freelancers’ Association (www.the-efa.org), which is for freelancers of every kind related to editorial professions, mostly comprised of American members but has many members from other countries as well, including Israel. Another option is to join some of the myriads of e-mail lists out there.
Here are a few of the e-mail discussion lists I am or have been a member of—from day one, I have found that all of these lists provide a wealth of collective information, advice and support from fellow members, each in their own unique way, and anyone is welcome to join and participate.
* Index-L (http://indexpup.com/index-list/about.txt): This is, as far as I know, the main indexing discussion list that is not affiliated with any particular society.
* Indexers’ Discussion List (http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/indexersdiscussionlist): Pretty similar to Index-L but seems to cover slightly different conversation topics. Most indexers are subscribed to both lists.
* Index Students (http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/indexstudents): This group is mostly for beginners, but any level of indexing expertise is welcome here.
* IndexPeers (http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/IndexPeers): This group is great for peer reviews of indexes, both for practice and those that will be published.
* Freelance (http://www.lsoft.com/scripts/wl.exe?SL1=FREELANCE&H=COMMUNITY.LSOFT.COM): Freelancers in the publishing industry. This list is great for discussing the business aspects of the indexing biz.
In Israel, the CIWI (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CIWI) and COandPI (http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/COandPI) lists are great to be a member of to get connected with those in the publishing industry. In addition to these lists, many of the indexing societies, Special Interest Groups and users of the main indexing software programs each maintain one or more e-mail lists. Makes for quite a full e-mail box, but any of these lists can be put on digest format (once a day or after a certain number of messages) and they are totally worth reading.
For my last installment of All About Indexing, I’ll continue the discussion on starting an indexing business by talking about marketing. Until then!
Shoshana Hurwitz
Hurwitz Indexing
As you could probably tell from reading my own introduction, from the first day of Kari’s instruction with me I knew I felt the same way. As a child I automatically sorted my comic books by color on my shelf and liked to create graphs based on which of my friends I had shared my candy with that month, and how many pieces went to each friend! (Looking back, I am quite certain they thought I was headed for the loony bin!) But loony as I was, it was great practice for my eventual career choice, and as I watched my daughters, who are now 6 and 3, automatically sort their M&Ms during snack time today (complete with heavy trading negotiations to be “fair” on color distribution!), am convinced that this trait is not only innate but hereditary! I later learned that my love of language and books, organization skills and obsessive attention to detail were just the skills needed to be a great indexer, and my self-discipline, preference of working alone and proficiency with computers were just the skills needed to be a great freelancer! Although many indexers have a background in English and many are part-time or former librarians, there are plenty also who arrive at indexing as a career in other ways.
Taking a course in indexing only sharpens these innate skills. Many library science graduate schools offer courses in indexing (which may explain why indexing and librarianship careers often intertwine), but in my particular case, this class was never offered in the three years it took me to complete my degree. The standard national indexing courses in America are Basic and Applied Indexing, which are given by the United States Department of Agriculture, and the American Society of Indexers also offers a course in indexing. As a teacher both of the USDA courses and of her own self-paced, e-mail-based correspondence course offered as part of her business, Index West (www.indexw.com), which is the one I took and something that can be taken by anyone in the world (that means you, interested-in-indexing Israelis!), Kari Kells was the ideal choice when picking someone to chat with about the various indexing courses out there.
Shoshana: Hi, Kari! When did indexing courses come onto the scene and in what capacity?
Kari: I’m not sure when the first indexing course was taught, but I do know that the first indexing correspondence course in the U.S. was the Basic course offered by the USDA, which was created in 1984. Starting a few years ago, new correspondence courses have emerged in the U.S.
Shoshana: How many indexers do you think are self-taught?
Kari: A 2004 ASI survey states that 33% of its members are self-taught.
Shoshana: Of course, not all American indexers are ASI members, but that’s probably a good guess. Very interesting!
The second thing that is very helpful to have as a professional indexer, especially as a freelancer, is a membership in an indexing society. This is especially useful because indexing is such a solitary profession, and the nature of the internet has made it so much easier these days for indexers to keep in touch with each other and exchange professional advice and referrals. Also, these societies have Special Interest Groups, which bring together indexers who specialize in a variety of topics.
The major indexing societies are:
* American Society of Indexers: www.asindexing.org
* Indexing Society of Canada: www.indexers.ca
* Australian and New Zealand Society of Indexers: www.aussi.org
* Society of Indexers [Britain and Ireland]: www.indexers.org.uk
For indexers who live in countries such as Israel, who do not yet have an indexing organization to call their own, there are other options out there to connect and network with other indexers (besides the obvious, which is to join Elephant and chat with me!). One of these options is joining the Editorial Freelancers’ Association (www.the-efa.org), which is for freelancers of every kind related to editorial professions, mostly comprised of American members but has many members from other countries as well, including Israel. Another option is to join some of the myriads of e-mail lists out there.
Here are a few of the e-mail discussion lists I am or have been a member of—from day one, I have found that all of these lists provide a wealth of collective information, advice and support from fellow members, each in their own unique way, and anyone is welcome to join and participate.
* Index-L (http://indexpup.com/index-list/about.txt): This is, as far as I know, the main indexing discussion list that is not affiliated with any particular society.
* Indexers’ Discussion List (http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/indexersdiscussionlist): Pretty similar to Index-L but seems to cover slightly different conversation topics. Most indexers are subscribed to both lists.
* Index Students (http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/indexstudents): This group is mostly for beginners, but any level of indexing expertise is welcome here.
* IndexPeers (http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/IndexPeers): This group is great for peer reviews of indexes, both for practice and those that will be published.
* Freelance (http://www.lsoft.com/scripts/wl.exe?SL1=FREELANCE&H=COMMUNITY.LSOFT.COM): Freelancers in the publishing industry. This list is great for discussing the business aspects of the indexing biz.
In Israel, the CIWI (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CIWI) and COandPI (http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/COandPI) lists are great to be a member of to get connected with those in the publishing industry. In addition to these lists, many of the indexing societies, Special Interest Groups and users of the main indexing software programs each maintain one or more e-mail lists. Makes for quite a full e-mail box, but any of these lists can be put on digest format (once a day or after a certain number of messages) and they are totally worth reading.
For my last installment of All About Indexing, I’ll continue the discussion on starting an indexing business by talking about marketing. Until then!
Shoshana Hurwitz
Hurwitz Indexing
All About Indexing #6: Interviews With Indexers
Hi, everyone! Continuing last column’s discussion of the history of indexing, I have found that these days there are almost as many methods of index creation as there are indexers! At this point I felt like my book research could only take me so far, so I decided to interview a few longtime indexers to get some anecdotes on the topic. Mike Bennett, Ellen Chapman, Linda Hallinger, Pam Rider, Barbara Roos and Kamm Schreiner come from a variety of backgrounds and I learned a lot from speaking with them!
Shoshana: Hi, everyone! So, when did you all start indexing? What technologies were available at the time?
Pam: I began indexing as the sole production/editorial staff of a small academic publishing company. Eventually, a title arrived that the authors did not wish to index. The CEO (owner) just kept saying, “Pam will do the index.” And I kept saying, “There are professional indexers who do that.” Of course, my boss won. Even though we followed APA style, Chicago was a backup source. Even in the early 1980s, there was a major indexing section. I also did my first index based on preferences as a devoted index user. No one had to tell me not to have a long string of undifferentiated locators. “Techology” was electric typewriters and index cards. Like today, mental processes and human evaluation were really the most important aspects of creating indexes.
Linda: I started filing slips for my mom in the 1960s, but I did not begin indexing on a full-time basis until 1977. We used regular-sized sheets of paper (8.5 x 11) that had perforations that divided the page into 10 sections. We would type each entry into its own section. At the end of the day we would then have to separate the sections and begin to file them. We used to use soda cartons that held 24 bottles as our filing assistant. Growing up, filing those slips was my first job, paying 1 cent per inch of slips that I filed, generally down to the third letter. Then, once the slips were completely filed, the whole index had to be retyped. My best typing speed at that was about 100 pages a day, so I could spend most of a week on a long index—and then we just put the index pages into the mail. I guess things were working on a different time frame, but at least there were not so many of those frustrating last-minute revisions. Our technologies consisted of our IBM typewriters (although I did do a couple of years of indexing on a manual typewriter too), perforated indexing paper, soda boxes with 24 divisions for filing (a couple had to get doubled up), and assorted boxes for holding the slips of paper. We made the transition to computers and CINDEX software in 1991. Our mother-daughter collaboration continued for nearly 30 years, until my mom retired from indexing after 62 years and I took over the business.
Mike: Reminds me of my index training in about the same period on a publisher's indexing staff. We dictated our lines on dictabelt machines. The typist pool ("the girls") typed them on specially-ordered heavy paper that fed into the typewriters from a roll. The paper was perforated at about 4” intervals. Another department separated and alphabetized the slips and they were returned to us for revision. Sometime in the mid-‘70s this operation was revolutionized. (It was about the same time that computers replaced the linotype machines.) Our dictation was "inputted" by special IBM terminals, and sent to an outside vendor for sorting. It was returned to us as a "printout". We "marked up" changes which somebody else transferred to the IBM data. Seemed pretty snazzy at the time.
Ellen: In 1968 part of my first professional librarian job was to index periodicals for a quarterly bibliography. We used pre-printed index cards, filled in the info by hand and alphabetized the cards each day. A typist merged the cards from several librarians each quarter and typed it all onto master sheets that were photo-reproduced for the publication. In 1991-92 when laptops were beyond my budget, I lived in a developing country with erratic electricity. I indexed a year's worth of a newspaper on microfilm, using a hand-crank portable microfilm reader (when the electricity was on). Suitcase space was tight, so I brought 3x5 notepads of thin paper and used both sides for handwritten indexing. Tedious, but there was not much else to do there. Also tedious was keyboarding the thousands of entries to produce the index when I returned to the U.S.
Shoshana: How did the popularity of typewriters/word processors/computers/the Internet change the way you index, including average time worked on each project and editing your indexes? How about the advent of indexing software programs?
Linda: As an example of the slower pre-computer pace, we used to have editors write us letters, asking if we were available for a project. We would reply by mail, and then would eventually receive the project by mail or eventually UPS. When doing the pre-computer indexing, the final retyping of the index could take several days, but this was also a way of doing a final check on the index. Losing that review time was a big adjustment in going to the computers. Also, pre-computer, it was rare to have last-minute revisions, and I think in general the books did not have so many errors too. I don’t miss having to spend the time on filing slips or retyping the final index, and I do appreciate other computer benefits too, such as spellchecking, verifying cross-references, being able to switch to a page order sort at times, and being able to search a file for a term I missed earlier. Those are all very helpful features, but in general my approach to indexing is not that much different than when I was using a typewriter.
Pam: I began using CINDEX software in the early 1990s, about the same time I went online. Naturally, software provides automated ease: allowing a larger proportion of time to be devoted to analysis. Having software alphabetize is still, to me, the largest advantage of software. It’s the sort of thing that a machine does best. Of course, with software, I can constantly check on consistency of entry wording—I edit as I enter. Spellchecking is helpful, but can be a trap. The Internet has proven to be a wonderful research tool. I can now look up obscure terms and usage. Determining which medications are generic and which are “brand names” is wonderful—print lists are always behind the actual formulary. Of course, most of my marketing and client contact is through the Internet.
Shoshana: Kamm, I know you’re not an indexer, but your indexing software, SKY Index, has become one of the “Big Three” programs in the indexing world. Can you tell us a little about how that came to be?
Kamm: I am a latecomer to the professional indexing world. MACREX was first (I think) and then came CINDEX (again, I think). SKY Index got started by chance. My mother is a genealogist and she has compiled many bibliographies. She used to do the indexes using 3x5” cards which she had my brother and I help sort. She and a hired helper would type the finished index on a typewriter. During my college years she was working on another large index that she had entered into a dBase III program and asked me if I could write a program to sort, format and print the index for her. I said yes and wrote a very simplistic dBase III program that did just that. After she finished the book, she said I could sell the program to genealogists, but I said no way because it had not been written with any kind of user interface that was intended for a consumer. She sold some without my permission at a genealogy conference and I was so upset that she sold these programs that weren't intended for a consumer that I wrote a user interface for the program and that became the first "SKY Index". I gave that updated program to the purchasers for free. For many years it was marketed only to genealogists, but it was clear that market simply was not a good market. I then found out about "professional" indexers and thought I'd give that market a try. In 1998 I sold the first "Pre-release" copy of SKY Index Professional v5.0. I think the rest you probably know...
Shoshana: I can imagine that even today, there are still almost as many ways to index as there are indexers (and I, as a relative newbie, am still figuring out which one is the best!) So what do you do? Hard copy or PDF? Use PDFs while indexing or just while editing your completed index? Mark up text first and then enter into software, chapter by chapter, page by page, other? No marking up, just use dual computer screens or windows open? Read the whole book first, just read table of contents, skim book for an idea of general content or just dive in head-first?
Linda: I still have a strong preference for working with a hard copy, and one computer screen. For most books I use the “dive in head-first” method that you mentioned. I will sometimes underline terms that I have indexed. This can help me if I need to go back and correct the index for last-minute text revisions.
Pam: If you are seeking interesting processes—believe it or not—one comes from The Chicago Manual of Style. My first copy was the 12th edition. The indexing chapter was mostly index cards. The editing process detailed was delightful for such an august, esteemed publication. The wording was something like: “It may sound funny, but most people don't have much horizontal desk space. The best way to organize cards is to create alphabetical piles on the floor. The indexer then crawls around the stacks as the cards are edited and placed in new stacks.” Working on staff at a publisher, I had my stacks on piles of books in the warehouse. At home, the floor stacks and crawling worked fine. I think that process continued through the 13th edition. Ninety percent of my books come to me as PDFs, a form I initially balked at. I still would prefer to have both hard copy and PDF, but that’s mostly a pipe dream. PDFs are most handly for the search capabilities. Since using software, I don’t mark copy. I can always check out a page-order sort. I have definitely found that my memory ability has exploded as an indexer. I call it “exercising the memory muscles.” In addition to just the normal memory demands of indexing, I find that not marking copy forces me to concentrate at a level that enhances memory retention. Nothing makes works with contributed chapters easier—indexers just have to slog through and adapt to a plethora of various terminology changes. Good copyediting should take care of this, but that seems a pipe dream in today’s publishing world.
Shoshana: How did you learn how to index?
Pam: I learned by doing and reading indexes. I took no course. The worst thing was that I never got any feedback. I had the feeling that authors and clients were just happy the book was finished and ready to print. I got a lot of thank-you notes, but nothing about pluses and/or minuses.
Shoshana: At what point do you think indexing became a “real” career?
Barbara: I can tell you from my experience, there were few people calling themselves indexers before computers came on the scene. When people began looking for occupations to do with computers, many seized upon indexing as an occupation.
Linda: I was recently looking through some of my mom's papers, and found some from when she started her indexing business in 1944. Her initial marketing efforts included an introductory letter, followed up with a face-to-face visit with editors in many different publishing companies, mostly in New York City and in Philadelphia. Of course, there were a lot more publishing companies then than there are now. Her indexing rate at that time was 3.5 cents per entry. For some projects, such as a large medical encyclopedia, she recruited others to help and split the per-entry rate with them. One interesting thing is that right from the start she recruited others to index with/for her. Eventually she did change to working alone, but I thought that was quite different than most people today would start their indexing business.
Pam: I really began indexing solo in the mid-1990s. I would have preferred combining copyediting and indexing, but the copyediting paid so little (valued so little by publishers) I had to drop it. Now, I have several clients who have talked me into copyeditng at a fair hourly rate, but indexing is 70% of my billings.
Shoshana: Thanks so much, it was great talking to you!
From talking to these experienced indexers, it seems that it is true what Hazel Bell says in her book Indexers and indexes in fact & fiction: “The computer [is] often fallaciously credited with relieving indexers of the greater part, if not indeed the whole of their labours. Not at all: technology may ease and speed up the formerly manual processes of indexing, and the structural organization of an index, but can take no part in the determination of significance of references or the devising of linguistic terms to encapsulate and express them.”
Hope you enjoyed reading about indexing history as much as I enjoyed researching it! Next time we’ll dive into how to start your own indexing business. Bye!
Shoshana Hurwitz
Hurwitz Indexing
Sources:
Bell, Hazel K. 2001. Indexers and indexes in fact and fiction. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
[Parts of this column will also be published in the 50th anniversary issue of the International Journal of Indexing The Indexer in September 2008. (www.theindexer.org) The Indexer covers topics on just about all things related to indexing—much of the information in this column originally came from its articles (which has all been reproduced here with the kind permission of the Editor), and is a great addition to the subscription list of anyone in the publishing field!]
Shoshana: Hi, everyone! So, when did you all start indexing? What technologies were available at the time?
Pam: I began indexing as the sole production/editorial staff of a small academic publishing company. Eventually, a title arrived that the authors did not wish to index. The CEO (owner) just kept saying, “Pam will do the index.” And I kept saying, “There are professional indexers who do that.” Of course, my boss won. Even though we followed APA style, Chicago was a backup source. Even in the early 1980s, there was a major indexing section. I also did my first index based on preferences as a devoted index user. No one had to tell me not to have a long string of undifferentiated locators. “Techology” was electric typewriters and index cards. Like today, mental processes and human evaluation were really the most important aspects of creating indexes.
Linda: I started filing slips for my mom in the 1960s, but I did not begin indexing on a full-time basis until 1977. We used regular-sized sheets of paper (8.5 x 11) that had perforations that divided the page into 10 sections. We would type each entry into its own section. At the end of the day we would then have to separate the sections and begin to file them. We used to use soda cartons that held 24 bottles as our filing assistant. Growing up, filing those slips was my first job, paying 1 cent per inch of slips that I filed, generally down to the third letter. Then, once the slips were completely filed, the whole index had to be retyped. My best typing speed at that was about 100 pages a day, so I could spend most of a week on a long index—and then we just put the index pages into the mail. I guess things were working on a different time frame, but at least there were not so many of those frustrating last-minute revisions. Our technologies consisted of our IBM typewriters (although I did do a couple of years of indexing on a manual typewriter too), perforated indexing paper, soda boxes with 24 divisions for filing (a couple had to get doubled up), and assorted boxes for holding the slips of paper. We made the transition to computers and CINDEX software in 1991. Our mother-daughter collaboration continued for nearly 30 years, until my mom retired from indexing after 62 years and I took over the business.
Mike: Reminds me of my index training in about the same period on a publisher's indexing staff. We dictated our lines on dictabelt machines. The typist pool ("the girls") typed them on specially-ordered heavy paper that fed into the typewriters from a roll. The paper was perforated at about 4” intervals. Another department separated and alphabetized the slips and they were returned to us for revision. Sometime in the mid-‘70s this operation was revolutionized. (It was about the same time that computers replaced the linotype machines.) Our dictation was "inputted" by special IBM terminals, and sent to an outside vendor for sorting. It was returned to us as a "printout". We "marked up" changes which somebody else transferred to the IBM data. Seemed pretty snazzy at the time.
Ellen: In 1968 part of my first professional librarian job was to index periodicals for a quarterly bibliography. We used pre-printed index cards, filled in the info by hand and alphabetized the cards each day. A typist merged the cards from several librarians each quarter and typed it all onto master sheets that were photo-reproduced for the publication. In 1991-92 when laptops were beyond my budget, I lived in a developing country with erratic electricity. I indexed a year's worth of a newspaper on microfilm, using a hand-crank portable microfilm reader (when the electricity was on). Suitcase space was tight, so I brought 3x5 notepads of thin paper and used both sides for handwritten indexing. Tedious, but there was not much else to do there. Also tedious was keyboarding the thousands of entries to produce the index when I returned to the U.S.
Shoshana: How did the popularity of typewriters/word processors/computers/the Internet change the way you index, including average time worked on each project and editing your indexes? How about the advent of indexing software programs?
Linda: As an example of the slower pre-computer pace, we used to have editors write us letters, asking if we were available for a project. We would reply by mail, and then would eventually receive the project by mail or eventually UPS. When doing the pre-computer indexing, the final retyping of the index could take several days, but this was also a way of doing a final check on the index. Losing that review time was a big adjustment in going to the computers. Also, pre-computer, it was rare to have last-minute revisions, and I think in general the books did not have so many errors too. I don’t miss having to spend the time on filing slips or retyping the final index, and I do appreciate other computer benefits too, such as spellchecking, verifying cross-references, being able to switch to a page order sort at times, and being able to search a file for a term I missed earlier. Those are all very helpful features, but in general my approach to indexing is not that much different than when I was using a typewriter.
Pam: I began using CINDEX software in the early 1990s, about the same time I went online. Naturally, software provides automated ease: allowing a larger proportion of time to be devoted to analysis. Having software alphabetize is still, to me, the largest advantage of software. It’s the sort of thing that a machine does best. Of course, with software, I can constantly check on consistency of entry wording—I edit as I enter. Spellchecking is helpful, but can be a trap. The Internet has proven to be a wonderful research tool. I can now look up obscure terms and usage. Determining which medications are generic and which are “brand names” is wonderful—print lists are always behind the actual formulary. Of course, most of my marketing and client contact is through the Internet.
Shoshana: Kamm, I know you’re not an indexer, but your indexing software, SKY Index, has become one of the “Big Three” programs in the indexing world. Can you tell us a little about how that came to be?
Kamm: I am a latecomer to the professional indexing world. MACREX was first (I think) and then came CINDEX (again, I think). SKY Index got started by chance. My mother is a genealogist and she has compiled many bibliographies. She used to do the indexes using 3x5” cards which she had my brother and I help sort. She and a hired helper would type the finished index on a typewriter. During my college years she was working on another large index that she had entered into a dBase III program and asked me if I could write a program to sort, format and print the index for her. I said yes and wrote a very simplistic dBase III program that did just that. After she finished the book, she said I could sell the program to genealogists, but I said no way because it had not been written with any kind of user interface that was intended for a consumer. She sold some without my permission at a genealogy conference and I was so upset that she sold these programs that weren't intended for a consumer that I wrote a user interface for the program and that became the first "SKY Index". I gave that updated program to the purchasers for free. For many years it was marketed only to genealogists, but it was clear that market simply was not a good market. I then found out about "professional" indexers and thought I'd give that market a try. In 1998 I sold the first "Pre-release" copy of SKY Index Professional v5.0. I think the rest you probably know...
Shoshana: I can imagine that even today, there are still almost as many ways to index as there are indexers (and I, as a relative newbie, am still figuring out which one is the best!) So what do you do? Hard copy or PDF? Use PDFs while indexing or just while editing your completed index? Mark up text first and then enter into software, chapter by chapter, page by page, other? No marking up, just use dual computer screens or windows open? Read the whole book first, just read table of contents, skim book for an idea of general content or just dive in head-first?
Linda: I still have a strong preference for working with a hard copy, and one computer screen. For most books I use the “dive in head-first” method that you mentioned. I will sometimes underline terms that I have indexed. This can help me if I need to go back and correct the index for last-minute text revisions.
Pam: If you are seeking interesting processes—believe it or not—one comes from The Chicago Manual of Style. My first copy was the 12th edition. The indexing chapter was mostly index cards. The editing process detailed was delightful for such an august, esteemed publication. The wording was something like: “It may sound funny, but most people don't have much horizontal desk space. The best way to organize cards is to create alphabetical piles on the floor. The indexer then crawls around the stacks as the cards are edited and placed in new stacks.” Working on staff at a publisher, I had my stacks on piles of books in the warehouse. At home, the floor stacks and crawling worked fine. I think that process continued through the 13th edition. Ninety percent of my books come to me as PDFs, a form I initially balked at. I still would prefer to have both hard copy and PDF, but that’s mostly a pipe dream. PDFs are most handly for the search capabilities. Since using software, I don’t mark copy. I can always check out a page-order sort. I have definitely found that my memory ability has exploded as an indexer. I call it “exercising the memory muscles.” In addition to just the normal memory demands of indexing, I find that not marking copy forces me to concentrate at a level that enhances memory retention. Nothing makes works with contributed chapters easier—indexers just have to slog through and adapt to a plethora of various terminology changes. Good copyediting should take care of this, but that seems a pipe dream in today’s publishing world.
Shoshana: How did you learn how to index?
Pam: I learned by doing and reading indexes. I took no course. The worst thing was that I never got any feedback. I had the feeling that authors and clients were just happy the book was finished and ready to print. I got a lot of thank-you notes, but nothing about pluses and/or minuses.
Shoshana: At what point do you think indexing became a “real” career?
Barbara: I can tell you from my experience, there were few people calling themselves indexers before computers came on the scene. When people began looking for occupations to do with computers, many seized upon indexing as an occupation.
Linda: I was recently looking through some of my mom's papers, and found some from when she started her indexing business in 1944. Her initial marketing efforts included an introductory letter, followed up with a face-to-face visit with editors in many different publishing companies, mostly in New York City and in Philadelphia. Of course, there were a lot more publishing companies then than there are now. Her indexing rate at that time was 3.5 cents per entry. For some projects, such as a large medical encyclopedia, she recruited others to help and split the per-entry rate with them. One interesting thing is that right from the start she recruited others to index with/for her. Eventually she did change to working alone, but I thought that was quite different than most people today would start their indexing business.
Pam: I really began indexing solo in the mid-1990s. I would have preferred combining copyediting and indexing, but the copyediting paid so little (valued so little by publishers) I had to drop it. Now, I have several clients who have talked me into copyeditng at a fair hourly rate, but indexing is 70% of my billings.
Shoshana: Thanks so much, it was great talking to you!
From talking to these experienced indexers, it seems that it is true what Hazel Bell says in her book Indexers and indexes in fact & fiction: “The computer [is] often fallaciously credited with relieving indexers of the greater part, if not indeed the whole of their labours. Not at all: technology may ease and speed up the formerly manual processes of indexing, and the structural organization of an index, but can take no part in the determination of significance of references or the devising of linguistic terms to encapsulate and express them.”
Hope you enjoyed reading about indexing history as much as I enjoyed researching it! Next time we’ll dive into how to start your own indexing business. Bye!
Shoshana Hurwitz
Hurwitz Indexing
Sources:
Bell, Hazel K. 2001. Indexers and indexes in fact and fiction. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
[Parts of this column will also be published in the 50th anniversary issue of the International Journal of Indexing The Indexer in September 2008. (www.theindexer.org) The Indexer covers topics on just about all things related to indexing—much of the information in this column originally came from its articles (which has all been reproduced here with the kind permission of the Editor), and is a great addition to the subscription list of anyone in the publishing field!]
All About Indexing #5: The Process of Index Creation
Hello again, my fellow Elephants! I would like to continue this week on the topic of “how we index”—indexing processes of yesterday and today and the history of indexing technologies. The American Society of Indexers (www.asindexing.org) website gives the following standard process:
How is indexing done?
The indexer usually receives a set of page proofs for the book (images of the actual pages as they will appear, including final page numbers), often at the same time as final proofreading is being done by someone else. The indexer reads the page proofs, making a list of headings and subheadings (terms to appear in the index) and the location of each pertinent reference. After completing the rough index the indexer edits it for structure, clarity and consistency, formats it to specifications, proofreads it and submits it to the client in hard-copy form, on disk, by modem, or by email. Since the indexer is very late in the production process, there can be unreasonable time pressure. Where the text is already on computer disk, the indexing features of word processing programs can ease the handling of page numbers and sorting, but the real indexing work is still done by the human. Powerful dedicated software is also available for personal computers to aid the professional indexer in constructing, sorting, editing and formatting the index, whether from hard-copy text or computer files. Many indexers use one of the programs listed on the Indexing Software page.
Donald and Ana Cleveland give the following guide to steps of the actual indexing process as follows:
1. Decide which topics in the item are relevant to the potential user of the document.
2. Decide which topics truly capture the content of the document.
3. Determine terms that come as close as possible to the terminology used in the document.
4. Decide on index terms and the specificity of those terms.
5. Group references to information that is scattered in the text of the document.
6. Combine headings and subheadings into related multilevel headings.
7. Direct the user seeking information under terms not used to those that are being used by means of see references and to related terms with see also references.
8. Arrange the index into a systematic presentation.
In G. Norman Knight’s 1979 book Indexing, The Art of, a couple of process descriptions are given:
“Compiling an index necessitates the preparation of a number of entries, which in their final form must be either typewritten or very legibly handwritten in ink. Several different methods of recording them are in use, but probably 90 percent of indexers today use either index cards or ‘slips.’ The size usually preferred is 5 x 3 in. Two further kinds of equipment are essential. The first is a container in which to hold the cards (or slips) while in use on one’s desk. For this a wooden tray, with sides shallower than the slips or cards, is best. The other necessity of at least twenty-four guide-cards, marked (on a projecting surface) with the letters of the alphabet—X, Y and Z on the bought version usually come together on the same guide-card. It has long been my practice to use cards rather than slips and to type on them all headings and subheadings in the first reference in each case, adding any further references in ink. Another method of recording entries is by the use of gummed sheets of paper, perforated throughout their length at intervals of two or three inches. Each item is written or typed on its own perforated strip. When the indexing is completed and double-checked, the strips are separated at their perforations and sorted alphabetically, and then the gummed strips are mounted on quarto rough paper, ready for the printer. The use of a notebook—preferably loose-leaf—is one of the earliest methods of recording the entries for an index. But it lacks the flexibility of cards or slips and that it could not be expected to work well for a large index, or one involving many sub-subheadings.”
I just have to reprint here what could be the winner of the “most unusual indexing method” award, which has been related in several indexing books, including The Indexer (vol. 6, no. 3) and Knight’s Indexing, The Art of, devised by Dr. Lindsay Verrier: “I read through the book in galleys...and underline in pencil words or phrases that need indexing, and so am ready for instant action as soon as the page-proofs arrive. Taking a foolscap sheet and two carbons into my typewriter, which is an elegant Olympia electric, I set margins for two columns, and write my index straight-out, in page order. I then take a rather large plastic bowl, one of those kitchen bowls with a snap-on cover, and shut the doors and windows and snip up the whole index into single-line pieces, which all fall into the bowl. The snap-on lid allows me to leave the work at any stage. Next, I sort the small strips into first-letter order on a table, getting 26 piles of varying size, and when done stuff them into old envelopes which are rubber-banded together. Now, at leisure, and in the depths of the silent tropic night, the real work can begin. I tip out the first (“A”) envelope on a large smooth table, turn the strips face-up, and slither them into alphabetical columns. This is very easy and rather fun. When a number have been done, I take a galley-sized piece of newsprint, torn from the large roll of 18-inch newsprint that is fixed on the wall, and run on to it two lines or strips of PVC adhesive from one of the standard dispensers. With tweezers the little strips can be picked up and touched down on the PVC, to which they instantly and permanently adhere...this pasted-up set can be corrected or amended in several ways: it can be written-on; new lines can be pasted on; it can be cut through and new segments inserted, and so on. This operation gives me a line-by-line index that is a pleasure to copy. By counting the numbers one can type straight out across the page in two columns...this copy is discussed with the author, and the final copy made in single column to suit his wishes...typings are of course made with several carbons, to guard against disasters...our main enemies are hurricanes, house girls and cocktail parties.” Doesn’t sound very time-efficient to me!
Next time, I’ll continue the discussion by interviewing some longtime indexers. Until then!
Shoshana Hurwitz
Hurwitz Indexing
Sources:
The American Society of Indexers website (www.asindexing.com)
Cleveland, Donald B., and Ana D. Cleveland. 1990. Introduction to indexing and abstracting. Englewood, Colo: Libraries Unlimited.
Knight, G. Norman. 1979. Indexing, the art of: a guide to the indexing of books and periodicals. London: Allen & Unwin.
[Parts of this column will also be published in the 50th anniversary issue of the International Journal of Indexing The Indexer in September 2008. (www.theindexer.org) The Indexer covers topics on just about all things related to indexing—much of the information in this column originally came from its articles (which has all been reproduced here with the kind permission of the Editor), and is a great addition to the subscription list of anyone in the publishing field!]
How is indexing done?
The indexer usually receives a set of page proofs for the book (images of the actual pages as they will appear, including final page numbers), often at the same time as final proofreading is being done by someone else. The indexer reads the page proofs, making a list of headings and subheadings (terms to appear in the index) and the location of each pertinent reference. After completing the rough index the indexer edits it for structure, clarity and consistency, formats it to specifications, proofreads it and submits it to the client in hard-copy form, on disk, by modem, or by email. Since the indexer is very late in the production process, there can be unreasonable time pressure. Where the text is already on computer disk, the indexing features of word processing programs can ease the handling of page numbers and sorting, but the real indexing work is still done by the human. Powerful dedicated software is also available for personal computers to aid the professional indexer in constructing, sorting, editing and formatting the index, whether from hard-copy text or computer files. Many indexers use one of the programs listed on the Indexing Software page.
Donald and Ana Cleveland give the following guide to steps of the actual indexing process as follows:
1. Decide which topics in the item are relevant to the potential user of the document.
2. Decide which topics truly capture the content of the document.
3. Determine terms that come as close as possible to the terminology used in the document.
4. Decide on index terms and the specificity of those terms.
5. Group references to information that is scattered in the text of the document.
6. Combine headings and subheadings into related multilevel headings.
7. Direct the user seeking information under terms not used to those that are being used by means of see references and to related terms with see also references.
8. Arrange the index into a systematic presentation.
In G. Norman Knight’s 1979 book Indexing, The Art of, a couple of process descriptions are given:
“Compiling an index necessitates the preparation of a number of entries, which in their final form must be either typewritten or very legibly handwritten in ink. Several different methods of recording them are in use, but probably 90 percent of indexers today use either index cards or ‘slips.’ The size usually preferred is 5 x 3 in. Two further kinds of equipment are essential. The first is a container in which to hold the cards (or slips) while in use on one’s desk. For this a wooden tray, with sides shallower than the slips or cards, is best. The other necessity of at least twenty-four guide-cards, marked (on a projecting surface) with the letters of the alphabet—X, Y and Z on the bought version usually come together on the same guide-card. It has long been my practice to use cards rather than slips and to type on them all headings and subheadings in the first reference in each case, adding any further references in ink. Another method of recording entries is by the use of gummed sheets of paper, perforated throughout their length at intervals of two or three inches. Each item is written or typed on its own perforated strip. When the indexing is completed and double-checked, the strips are separated at their perforations and sorted alphabetically, and then the gummed strips are mounted on quarto rough paper, ready for the printer. The use of a notebook—preferably loose-leaf—is one of the earliest methods of recording the entries for an index. But it lacks the flexibility of cards or slips and that it could not be expected to work well for a large index, or one involving many sub-subheadings.”
I just have to reprint here what could be the winner of the “most unusual indexing method” award, which has been related in several indexing books, including The Indexer (vol. 6, no. 3) and Knight’s Indexing, The Art of, devised by Dr. Lindsay Verrier: “I read through the book in galleys...and underline in pencil words or phrases that need indexing, and so am ready for instant action as soon as the page-proofs arrive. Taking a foolscap sheet and two carbons into my typewriter, which is an elegant Olympia electric, I set margins for two columns, and write my index straight-out, in page order. I then take a rather large plastic bowl, one of those kitchen bowls with a snap-on cover, and shut the doors and windows and snip up the whole index into single-line pieces, which all fall into the bowl. The snap-on lid allows me to leave the work at any stage. Next, I sort the small strips into first-letter order on a table, getting 26 piles of varying size, and when done stuff them into old envelopes which are rubber-banded together. Now, at leisure, and in the depths of the silent tropic night, the real work can begin. I tip out the first (“A”) envelope on a large smooth table, turn the strips face-up, and slither them into alphabetical columns. This is very easy and rather fun. When a number have been done, I take a galley-sized piece of newsprint, torn from the large roll of 18-inch newsprint that is fixed on the wall, and run on to it two lines or strips of PVC adhesive from one of the standard dispensers. With tweezers the little strips can be picked up and touched down on the PVC, to which they instantly and permanently adhere...this pasted-up set can be corrected or amended in several ways: it can be written-on; new lines can be pasted on; it can be cut through and new segments inserted, and so on. This operation gives me a line-by-line index that is a pleasure to copy. By counting the numbers one can type straight out across the page in two columns...this copy is discussed with the author, and the final copy made in single column to suit his wishes...typings are of course made with several carbons, to guard against disasters...our main enemies are hurricanes, house girls and cocktail parties.” Doesn’t sound very time-efficient to me!
Next time, I’ll continue the discussion by interviewing some longtime indexers. Until then!
Shoshana Hurwitz
Hurwitz Indexing
Sources:
The American Society of Indexers website (www.asindexing.com)
Cleveland, Donald B., and Ana D. Cleveland. 1990. Introduction to indexing and abstracting. Englewood, Colo: Libraries Unlimited.
Knight, G. Norman. 1979. Indexing, the art of: a guide to the indexing of books and periodicals. London: Allen & Unwin.
[Parts of this column will also be published in the 50th anniversary issue of the International Journal of Indexing The Indexer in September 2008. (www.theindexer.org) The Indexer covers topics on just about all things related to indexing—much of the information in this column originally came from its articles (which has all been reproduced here with the kind permission of the Editor), and is a great addition to the subscription list of anyone in the publishing field!]
All About Indexing #4: A History of Index Creation
Hi, everyone! For this column I would like to talk a little about the history of the index. I don’t think this is something I learned about in indexing school, so writing this will be a history lesson for all of us!
Even before books were invented, the Greeks and Romans were already hard at work discovering different ways of organizing information. One of the first forms of written material they used was the papyrus scroll, but it was not very efficient when it came to information retrieval.
Imagine picking a word at random and then trying to find that word in a Torah, or even a microfilm machine which does the “rolling” automatically. Still kind of like picking a needle out of a haystack, right? And even if they had included some form of an index (kind of hard with no page numbers though!), who would have wanted to unroll it to the end to get to the index and then back again to find the place they were looking for?
So, eventually there was enough written material out there to necessitate the invention of some kind of retrieval system. The first use of the word “index” referred to the little slip attached to the scroll which contained the title and author of the work, but that was about it. The next system used that was called an “index” is what we now know as a table of contents, still used today but not to be confused with what we now call an index! The first table of contents appeared around two millennia ago and was pretty much simply a list of what subjects or chapters each work contained and the names of their authors, and sometimes included an abstract. It is estimated to be a few centuries later when the Greeks invented alphabetization.
Concordances appeared around the 5th century, but indexes as we know them today were only sporadically used starting in the 13th century and were not widely used until after the invention of Gutenberg’s printing press in the 15th century and the invention of page numbers in 1470, when all copies of a book would come out with exactly the same information on each page of every copy. By the 16th century, indexes had advanced from poorly arranged listings to analytical and comprehensive keys of information whch referred to page numbers. The first index entries were only alphabetized by the first letter of each word, then by the first syllable, but by the 18th century, it was the rule that each word in an index be alphabetized in its entirety.
Some of the first “modern” indexes, interestingly enough, came from Jewish books, such as Shmuel ben Alexander’s index of the legal book Hoshen Mishpat dating all the way back to 1691, with the following explanation given as his reason for indexing it: “Guidelines are necessary for the understanding of the Bible...I have made it my task to make notes for myself...and these keywords simplify locating the point for which the judges are searching...in which chapter and which verse.”
Indexing as a profession began to be recognized in the 18th century; before this time indexes were usually compiled by the book’s author. Samuel Ayscough was the first person to be known as an “index-maker” with indexes dating back to 1782. The first indexing society was the Index Society of London, which was formed in 1877, followed by the foundation of the Society of Indexers in 1957, the American Society of Indexers in 1968, the Australian and New Zealand Society of Indexers in 1976 and the Indexing Society of Canada in 1977. It was around the end of the 19th century when indexers began writing about their work.
Unfortunately, it seems that the struggle for indexing to be recognized fully as a profession may not be over quite yet. Dorothy Thomas said it best in her presentation “Book Indexing Principles and Standards” at the 1988 ASI convention: “There will always be a demand by authors, and some publishers, for professional indexers to write so-called hand-made indexes. They may be produced on a computer, but they are not automatic indexes. No author writes to have his book diminished by inadequate indexing...authors are anxious for the best index to reflect their massive writing effort. The fate of a book may affect their entire career and economic future of an author. It is no wonder that authors fight with editors over indexing; sometimes they fight with indexers. Like it or not, however, authors are beginning to take over indexing themselves, and more indexes will be author-written and author-edited in the future. Authors will not buy indexing software. Their word processing programs, such as WordPerfect, XYWrite, and Multimate, have indexing features. Some authors will write tolerable indexes; others will destroy their own work.”
Next time, I’m going to continue the discussion on the history of the index by talking about indexing technologies and methods through the years. Later!
Shoshana Hurwitz
Hurwitz Indexing
Even before books were invented, the Greeks and Romans were already hard at work discovering different ways of organizing information. One of the first forms of written material they used was the papyrus scroll, but it was not very efficient when it came to information retrieval.
Imagine picking a word at random and then trying to find that word in a Torah, or even a microfilm machine which does the “rolling” automatically. Still kind of like picking a needle out of a haystack, right? And even if they had included some form of an index (kind of hard with no page numbers though!), who would have wanted to unroll it to the end to get to the index and then back again to find the place they were looking for?
So, eventually there was enough written material out there to necessitate the invention of some kind of retrieval system. The first use of the word “index” referred to the little slip attached to the scroll which contained the title and author of the work, but that was about it. The next system used that was called an “index” is what we now know as a table of contents, still used today but not to be confused with what we now call an index! The first table of contents appeared around two millennia ago and was pretty much simply a list of what subjects or chapters each work contained and the names of their authors, and sometimes included an abstract. It is estimated to be a few centuries later when the Greeks invented alphabetization.
Concordances appeared around the 5th century, but indexes as we know them today were only sporadically used starting in the 13th century and were not widely used until after the invention of Gutenberg’s printing press in the 15th century and the invention of page numbers in 1470, when all copies of a book would come out with exactly the same information on each page of every copy. By the 16th century, indexes had advanced from poorly arranged listings to analytical and comprehensive keys of information whch referred to page numbers. The first index entries were only alphabetized by the first letter of each word, then by the first syllable, but by the 18th century, it was the rule that each word in an index be alphabetized in its entirety.
Some of the first “modern” indexes, interestingly enough, came from Jewish books, such as Shmuel ben Alexander’s index of the legal book Hoshen Mishpat dating all the way back to 1691, with the following explanation given as his reason for indexing it: “Guidelines are necessary for the understanding of the Bible...I have made it my task to make notes for myself...and these keywords simplify locating the point for which the judges are searching...in which chapter and which verse.”
Indexing as a profession began to be recognized in the 18th century; before this time indexes were usually compiled by the book’s author. Samuel Ayscough was the first person to be known as an “index-maker” with indexes dating back to 1782. The first indexing society was the Index Society of London, which was formed in 1877, followed by the foundation of the Society of Indexers in 1957, the American Society of Indexers in 1968, the Australian and New Zealand Society of Indexers in 1976 and the Indexing Society of Canada in 1977. It was around the end of the 19th century when indexers began writing about their work.
Unfortunately, it seems that the struggle for indexing to be recognized fully as a profession may not be over quite yet. Dorothy Thomas said it best in her presentation “Book Indexing Principles and Standards” at the 1988 ASI convention: “There will always be a demand by authors, and some publishers, for professional indexers to write so-called hand-made indexes. They may be produced on a computer, but they are not automatic indexes. No author writes to have his book diminished by inadequate indexing...authors are anxious for the best index to reflect their massive writing effort. The fate of a book may affect their entire career and economic future of an author. It is no wonder that authors fight with editors over indexing; sometimes they fight with indexers. Like it or not, however, authors are beginning to take over indexing themselves, and more indexes will be author-written and author-edited in the future. Authors will not buy indexing software. Their word processing programs, such as WordPerfect, XYWrite, and Multimate, have indexing features. Some authors will write tolerable indexes; others will destroy their own work.”
Next time, I’m going to continue the discussion on the history of the index by talking about indexing technologies and methods through the years. Later!
Shoshana Hurwitz
Hurwitz Indexing
All About Indexing #3: Index vs. Concordance
Hi, everyone! As promised, today’s column topic is about the similarities and differences between an index and a concordance. A popular question professional indexers get is “Why do I need you to index my book for me? Can’t computers do that?” The answer is, not really—or at least, not well.
Last time I explained what an index is, but this time I would like to explain what an index is not. An index is not a concordance—an unanalyzed list of words or phrases which appear in a book. There are computer programs on the market today that can do this, but is this an index? No. The Chicago Manual of Style’s definition of a good index mentions that it “records every pertinent statement made within the body of the text. The subject matter and purpose of the book determine which statements are pertinent and which peripheral.” Which, of course, can only be known by a human and not by a computer.
Although it is probable that many of the entries in an index are identical to the words used in the text, there are many more instances in which the human indexer must manipulate the text in order to:
* be more concise
* put the most important word in a phrase first
* provide other search terms that may lead the reader to more information on a similar topic
* organize entries into main headings and subheadings, pulling together similar concepts coming from different parts of the book
These are all examples of ways that an indexer can make an index as easy as possible for the reader to find everything in the book that is important, all in alphabetical order.
Let me give you an example. Recently I indexed a health-food cookbook which included the following four recipe titles:
* Savory Mediterranean Chickpea Soup
* Spicy Hummus in Toasted Pita Loaves
* Lentil Stew
* Pasta e Fagioli Soup
Now, had a computer created a concordance instead of a human creating an index, none of these recipes would have landed under an entry for beans, even though in all four recipes, beans are a main ingredient! In addition to that, two of the recipes would have landed in entries that no reader would ever look under—“savory” and “spicy”—hummus would not be a subentry for “chickpeas”, and the hummus in pita recipe would not be a subentry for “sandwich”. I’m pretty sure my computer doesn’t speak Italian either! The other thing that concordances cannot do is create cross-references (directing the reader from one search term to another) or double-posts (creating identical entries under multiple search terms)—in this example, since hummus is made out of chickpeas, recipes for hummus would be under entries for both “hummus” and “chickpeas” as well as “beans”. Make sense? Great!
In All About Indexing #4, we’ll talk about the history of index creation. Until next time!
Shoshana Hurwitz
Hurwitz Indexing
Last time I explained what an index is, but this time I would like to explain what an index is not. An index is not a concordance—an unanalyzed list of words or phrases which appear in a book. There are computer programs on the market today that can do this, but is this an index? No. The Chicago Manual of Style’s definition of a good index mentions that it “records every pertinent statement made within the body of the text. The subject matter and purpose of the book determine which statements are pertinent and which peripheral.” Which, of course, can only be known by a human and not by a computer.
Although it is probable that many of the entries in an index are identical to the words used in the text, there are many more instances in which the human indexer must manipulate the text in order to:
* be more concise
* put the most important word in a phrase first
* provide other search terms that may lead the reader to more information on a similar topic
* organize entries into main headings and subheadings, pulling together similar concepts coming from different parts of the book
These are all examples of ways that an indexer can make an index as easy as possible for the reader to find everything in the book that is important, all in alphabetical order.
Let me give you an example. Recently I indexed a health-food cookbook which included the following four recipe titles:
* Savory Mediterranean Chickpea Soup
* Spicy Hummus in Toasted Pita Loaves
* Lentil Stew
* Pasta e Fagioli Soup
Now, had a computer created a concordance instead of a human creating an index, none of these recipes would have landed under an entry for beans, even though in all four recipes, beans are a main ingredient! In addition to that, two of the recipes would have landed in entries that no reader would ever look under—“savory” and “spicy”—hummus would not be a subentry for “chickpeas”, and the hummus in pita recipe would not be a subentry for “sandwich”. I’m pretty sure my computer doesn’t speak Italian either! The other thing that concordances cannot do is create cross-references (directing the reader from one search term to another) or double-posts (creating identical entries under multiple search terms)—in this example, since hummus is made out of chickpeas, recipes for hummus would be under entries for both “hummus” and “chickpeas” as well as “beans”. Make sense? Great!
In All About Indexing #4, we’ll talk about the history of index creation. Until next time!
Shoshana Hurwitz
Hurwitz Indexing
Saturday, November 22, 2008
All About Indexing #2: The Importance of Indexes
The most frequently-asked question that professional indexers get, it seems, is “can’t a computer do that?” My next column will deal with the differences between an index and a concordance, which is what computers can do, but in the meantime I want to explain what an index is and why indexes are a necessary part of a book. The American Society of Indexers website (www.asindexing.org) gives an excellent overview for anyone wanting to know basic information:
What is indexing?
According to the British indexing standard (BS3700:1988), an index is a systematic arrangement of entries designed to enable users to locate information in a document. The process of creating an index is called indexing, and a person who does it is called an indexer. There are many types of indexes, from cumulative indexes for journals to computer database indexes. This discussion concentrates on the back-of-the-book index, found in non-fiction books.
As I muddle through ulpan, I am frequently fascinated by the connections that Hebrew words and/or their roots have with each other. It was very interesting to learn that the Hebrew word for “index” is maftayakh, which is the same as the word for “key”—the index is the key that unlocks what is inside of a book, making its contents easy to find. I was barely amused, however, to discover from a real Israeli indexer that she is not always understood when using this word to describe her profession and eventually had to resort to saying “Ani osah indexsim”! I don’t want people thinking I make keys for a living, but despite the writing of this column coinciding with my ulpan unit on job titles, even my teacher was baffled at what to call me! (If any of you less-new Israelis know, feel free to comment...)
Who does indexing?
In the United States, according to tradition, the index for a non-fiction book is the responsibility of the author. Most authors don’t actually do it. While a few publishers have in-house indexers, most indexing is done by freelancers, often working from home, hired by authors, publishers or packagers. (A packager is an independent business which manages the production of a book by hiring freelancers to accomplish the various tasks involved, including copyediting, proofreading and indexing.) More often, the indexer is hired by the publisher, and the fee is deducted from the money due the author. If a packager hires the indexer directly, various payment arrangements can be made.
This, I believe, is where America has it right and Israel is not quite there yet, but a girl can always hope! As for the “why” of indexing, the explanation that I keep on my business website for clients sums it up pretty well.
The inclusion of a quality index is essential to the value of publications. Indexes do much more for books than provide a list of key words contained in them. A professional indexer reads and digests the meaning in a book and relates concepts in one part of the book to concepts in another. We are very well-read and know how to quickly, efficiently and accurately index the important information in a book. We are detail-oriented and can organize these details into a meaningful order. We bring an objectivity to the comprehension of a book’s concepts which represents the author’s perspective while keeping the reader’s point of view. We are also familiar with publishing practices, limitations and deadlines, and are skilled at working within the parameters dictated by the publisher. My indexes would greatly enhance the useability and increase sales of your books. By contacting me when your next title is being planned, I can show you that adding my indexes to your books will present readers with a text that is a more valuable tool than a one-time read.
Stay tuned for a comparison of indexes and concordances!
Shoshana Hurwitz
Hurwitz Indexing
What is indexing?
According to the British indexing standard (BS3700:1988), an index is a systematic arrangement of entries designed to enable users to locate information in a document. The process of creating an index is called indexing, and a person who does it is called an indexer. There are many types of indexes, from cumulative indexes for journals to computer database indexes. This discussion concentrates on the back-of-the-book index, found in non-fiction books.
As I muddle through ulpan, I am frequently fascinated by the connections that Hebrew words and/or their roots have with each other. It was very interesting to learn that the Hebrew word for “index” is maftayakh, which is the same as the word for “key”—the index is the key that unlocks what is inside of a book, making its contents easy to find. I was barely amused, however, to discover from a real Israeli indexer that she is not always understood when using this word to describe her profession and eventually had to resort to saying “Ani osah indexsim”! I don’t want people thinking I make keys for a living, but despite the writing of this column coinciding with my ulpan unit on job titles, even my teacher was baffled at what to call me! (If any of you less-new Israelis know, feel free to comment...)
Who does indexing?
In the United States, according to tradition, the index for a non-fiction book is the responsibility of the author. Most authors don’t actually do it. While a few publishers have in-house indexers, most indexing is done by freelancers, often working from home, hired by authors, publishers or packagers. (A packager is an independent business which manages the production of a book by hiring freelancers to accomplish the various tasks involved, including copyediting, proofreading and indexing.) More often, the indexer is hired by the publisher, and the fee is deducted from the money due the author. If a packager hires the indexer directly, various payment arrangements can be made.
This, I believe, is where America has it right and Israel is not quite there yet, but a girl can always hope! As for the “why” of indexing, the explanation that I keep on my business website for clients sums it up pretty well.
The inclusion of a quality index is essential to the value of publications. Indexes do much more for books than provide a list of key words contained in them. A professional indexer reads and digests the meaning in a book and relates concepts in one part of the book to concepts in another. We are very well-read and know how to quickly, efficiently and accurately index the important information in a book. We are detail-oriented and can organize these details into a meaningful order. We bring an objectivity to the comprehension of a book’s concepts which represents the author’s perspective while keeping the reader’s point of view. We are also familiar with publishing practices, limitations and deadlines, and are skilled at working within the parameters dictated by the publisher. My indexes would greatly enhance the useability and increase sales of your books. By contacting me when your next title is being planned, I can show you that adding my indexes to your books will present readers with a text that is a more valuable tool than a one-time read.
Stay tuned for a comparison of indexes and concordances!
Shoshana Hurwitz
Hurwitz Indexing
All About Indexing #1: Indexing in Israel
Hi! My name is Shoshana Hurwitz, and I’ll be doing a column for Elephant about a profession that seems to be little-known in Israel (though I hope to change that!): indexing. To see an overview of my background and how I ended up becoming a professional indexer, check out my introduction.
For my first column, I'd like to talk about how indexing is perceived in Israel. I don’t believe it to be any coincidence that the very same month that I found my true calling professionally was the month that my husband, daughters and I started our journey towards aliyah, which will culminate this coming July. But as excited as I was about my new love of indexing, I was dismayed to discover that my new internet friends in Israel were not quite as much. Here in Israel, they told me, indexing is not really thought of as a profession in itself. It is something that librarians do, something that tech writers do, but not something that just is.
My research on the subject of indexing in Israel led me to a sole article written in 1972 by M. Z. Barkai, which appeared in the International Journal of Indexing, The Indexer. The journal’s kind editor agreed to let me reprint selections of the article here, which is titled “Indexing in Israel: Encouraging Progress.”
“There are no more than ten indexers of suitable professional level. Some of the people who take on the task of indexing have high intellectual qualifications, and some of them are even professional librarians, but they lack experience and professional knowledge in the specific field of indexing. Sometimes, they have an inordinate amount of self-confidence and think that studying the indexes of other books will give them a grasp of the principles and they will become accomplished indexers...many publishers, even those who are large and firmly based, see indexing today as a not considerable necessity, and in order not to lag behind publishers abroad, they assign the preparation of indexes to one of their employees, without checking whether or not he is trained for the work. In the end, an acceptable-looking index, which appears to be no different from an ordinary index, is appended to the book. Only the reader who uses the index realizes of what low quality it is, and he does not get the assistance he expected from it. The need for the proper preparation of indexes is being recognized more and more, and in recent years positive steps have been taken in this direction...[I] published the first Hebrew work on indexing in 1968...the first printing was completely sold out within two weeks...[which] gave the impetus to introducing indexing in courses which train librarians at the intermediate level. It is obvious that the small number of hours devoted to the subject of indexing, and the fact that it is a credit and not an examination course, are not satisfactory, but this should be seen as a first step forward in the training of qualified indexers. It is regretted that the Graduate Library School of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has not yet recognized this profession as one of the important branches in the field of librarianship, and it is to be hoped that they too will not ignore it for long.”
Unfortunately it appears that thirty-six years later, not much has progressed in this field despite the positive tone Barkai has here. Former American Society of Indexers president Seth Maislin came to Israel in 2002 to give some indexing workshops and has also graciously agreed to let me reprint his reflections here, which confirm my research.
“I had the honor of being invited to give three indexing presentations in Israel this summer. The first presentation was open to anyone interested in the subject; the latter presentations were in-house sessions for high-tech companies. All three sessions lasted eight hours each, covered the same instructional materials (although with audience-appropriate focus and sensitivity), and had technical writers making up the vast majority of participants. My work was sponsored, scheduled, and paid for by In Other Words (http://www.words.israel.net). Technical writers in Israel are generally bilingual (Hebrew and English)—I taught everything in English—with many writers knowing English as a first language. Most high-tech documentation is published in English. Technical writers also are carefully trained and educated, many through professional certificate-level courses. In fact, I got the impression that the skills of the Israeli technical writer surpass on average those of the U.S. technical writer. Further, technical writers are paid quite highly in Israel. Taking into account standard-of-living differences, Israeli writers can earn about 50% more than U.S. writers. The growth in high-tech industry and the demand for English writers in a Hebrew country may be primary reasons for this. Speaking in Israel was different from speaking in the United States. I was concerned most about cultural and language differences, so I used only examples without cultural emphasis and worked to keep my English free of accents or colloquialisms. Yet the barriers of culture and language proved almost nonexistent. For example, Hebrew letters have no case, so a question like "should entries be uppercase or lowercase?" doesn't lend itself to discussion. Instead, the biggest barrier was also the most surprising: an overwhelmingly low understanding of indexing itself. A large percentage of documentation produced in Israel has no indexes. Indexes that are published are written by the technical writer herself, often with little training. The idea that I index for a living, writing one index after another, sounded impossible. That there could be many indexing societies around the world was unfathomable. The introduction to automated indexing is spreading quickly though in most cases not yet pursued. Anxious to index quickly, the quest for algorithm-based indexing seems logical, particularly when customers are complaining about the absence of indexes. Search is also considered a viable alternative to indexing. I believe that without greater understanding and discussion, automation and search are likely to become prominent substitutes for human indexing. This ignorance about indexing astounded me, especially because everyone in every class has frequently used a book's index. One group anxiously wanted to know why indexes are even necessary. They also wanted field testing results. Another group was looking for automated indexing tools, and they sought my advice on building such a tool for in-house use. These are questions I've never been asked in the States. On the other hand, I did hear many of the same questions asked by U.S. students: Is search sufficient? How long indexing should take? Is it acceptable to index while writing? How can the indexing process be made more efficient? All three groups wanted to know more about the embedded indexing capabilities their software allows; that indexers might write the index using a separate program seemed crazy to them. Finally, they wanted answers on master indexing, shared documents, and web-based publishing. Counterbalancing their ignorance was a love for argument. This major cultural difference was demonstrated throughout my time in Israel; when teaching I found these "battles" to be exciting. No one ever blindly accepted what I said. They insisted on testing me with counterexamples and opposing views. Fortunately I never provide inflexible rules to students; in fact, I'm against them in principle. I teach the process and procedures of evaluation and invite each individual to index according to her own priorities and those of the readers. Thanks to this good-natured stubbornness, I spent more time than planned on several subjects. It may also be that these writers were not prepared to give up many of their preconceived notions about indexing. This argumentative style lead to frequent questions and participation, usually about practical considerations that disallow the ideal situation. For example, after discussing how many locators are acceptable after a main heading, a writer argued HTML indexes couldn't be written that way, with URLs replacing page numbers. Similarly, after explaining the difference between see and see also, someone complained that hyperlinks for cross references were impossible in PDF. Each time I would repeat that every situation is different, and that there are no inflexible answers. Anything that leads to greater usability is good, anything that doesn't lead to greater usability is a waste of time, and it's the writer's responsibility to define the concept of "usability" itself. Another cultural difference was impatience. Overall the participants gave me high ratings on keeping their attention, but when it came to exercises, few participants were willing to work on anything for long. I found 15 minutes to be the outside limit; they started to get bored and distracted. (I have to comment that this behavior may unique to the classroom and not indicative of their personalities overall. I hope so, because otherwise indexing will be a greater chore for them than I imagined.) By the third seminar, then, I kept my exercises short, asking questions about participants' experiences instead of their answers. In summary, I am concerned that indexing is not receiving any recognition among these highly intelligent and thoughtful technical writers. The high-tech industry in Israel continues to grow quickly, and many of the writers in these companies are immigrants from English-speaking countries. Israel's communist history, which is embedded in the corporate culture, means that indexing can be announced anywhere within the chain of command. (The management hierarchy is ignored when it comes to communication, such that a mailroom clerk can complain directly to a company vice president.) Perhaps the best approach to instilling good indexing habits is with the writers themselves, such as through the Society for Technical Communication. But a printed article is unlikely to prove effective: With whom do the writers get to argue?”
Seth Maislin
Potomac Indexing, LLC
seth.maislin@potomacindexing.com
http://taxonomist.tripod.com
Next column’s topic: the importance of indexes. Later!
Shoshana Hurwitz
Hurwitz Indexing
For my first column, I'd like to talk about how indexing is perceived in Israel. I don’t believe it to be any coincidence that the very same month that I found my true calling professionally was the month that my husband, daughters and I started our journey towards aliyah, which will culminate this coming July. But as excited as I was about my new love of indexing, I was dismayed to discover that my new internet friends in Israel were not quite as much. Here in Israel, they told me, indexing is not really thought of as a profession in itself. It is something that librarians do, something that tech writers do, but not something that just is.
My research on the subject of indexing in Israel led me to a sole article written in 1972 by M. Z. Barkai, which appeared in the International Journal of Indexing, The Indexer. The journal’s kind editor agreed to let me reprint selections of the article here, which is titled “Indexing in Israel: Encouraging Progress.”
“There are no more than ten indexers of suitable professional level. Some of the people who take on the task of indexing have high intellectual qualifications, and some of them are even professional librarians, but they lack experience and professional knowledge in the specific field of indexing. Sometimes, they have an inordinate amount of self-confidence and think that studying the indexes of other books will give them a grasp of the principles and they will become accomplished indexers...many publishers, even those who are large and firmly based, see indexing today as a not considerable necessity, and in order not to lag behind publishers abroad, they assign the preparation of indexes to one of their employees, without checking whether or not he is trained for the work. In the end, an acceptable-looking index, which appears to be no different from an ordinary index, is appended to the book. Only the reader who uses the index realizes of what low quality it is, and he does not get the assistance he expected from it. The need for the proper preparation of indexes is being recognized more and more, and in recent years positive steps have been taken in this direction...[I] published the first Hebrew work on indexing in 1968...the first printing was completely sold out within two weeks...[which] gave the impetus to introducing indexing in courses which train librarians at the intermediate level. It is obvious that the small number of hours devoted to the subject of indexing, and the fact that it is a credit and not an examination course, are not satisfactory, but this should be seen as a first step forward in the training of qualified indexers. It is regretted that the Graduate Library School of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has not yet recognized this profession as one of the important branches in the field of librarianship, and it is to be hoped that they too will not ignore it for long.”
Unfortunately it appears that thirty-six years later, not much has progressed in this field despite the positive tone Barkai has here. Former American Society of Indexers president Seth Maislin came to Israel in 2002 to give some indexing workshops and has also graciously agreed to let me reprint his reflections here, which confirm my research.
“I had the honor of being invited to give three indexing presentations in Israel this summer. The first presentation was open to anyone interested in the subject; the latter presentations were in-house sessions for high-tech companies. All three sessions lasted eight hours each, covered the same instructional materials (although with audience-appropriate focus and sensitivity), and had technical writers making up the vast majority of participants. My work was sponsored, scheduled, and paid for by In Other Words (http://www.words.israel.net). Technical writers in Israel are generally bilingual (Hebrew and English)—I taught everything in English—with many writers knowing English as a first language. Most high-tech documentation is published in English. Technical writers also are carefully trained and educated, many through professional certificate-level courses. In fact, I got the impression that the skills of the Israeli technical writer surpass on average those of the U.S. technical writer. Further, technical writers are paid quite highly in Israel. Taking into account standard-of-living differences, Israeli writers can earn about 50% more than U.S. writers. The growth in high-tech industry and the demand for English writers in a Hebrew country may be primary reasons for this. Speaking in Israel was different from speaking in the United States. I was concerned most about cultural and language differences, so I used only examples without cultural emphasis and worked to keep my English free of accents or colloquialisms. Yet the barriers of culture and language proved almost nonexistent. For example, Hebrew letters have no case, so a question like "should entries be uppercase or lowercase?" doesn't lend itself to discussion. Instead, the biggest barrier was also the most surprising: an overwhelmingly low understanding of indexing itself. A large percentage of documentation produced in Israel has no indexes. Indexes that are published are written by the technical writer herself, often with little training. The idea that I index for a living, writing one index after another, sounded impossible. That there could be many indexing societies around the world was unfathomable. The introduction to automated indexing is spreading quickly though in most cases not yet pursued. Anxious to index quickly, the quest for algorithm-based indexing seems logical, particularly when customers are complaining about the absence of indexes. Search is also considered a viable alternative to indexing. I believe that without greater understanding and discussion, automation and search are likely to become prominent substitutes for human indexing. This ignorance about indexing astounded me, especially because everyone in every class has frequently used a book's index. One group anxiously wanted to know why indexes are even necessary. They also wanted field testing results. Another group was looking for automated indexing tools, and they sought my advice on building such a tool for in-house use. These are questions I've never been asked in the States. On the other hand, I did hear many of the same questions asked by U.S. students: Is search sufficient? How long indexing should take? Is it acceptable to index while writing? How can the indexing process be made more efficient? All three groups wanted to know more about the embedded indexing capabilities their software allows; that indexers might write the index using a separate program seemed crazy to them. Finally, they wanted answers on master indexing, shared documents, and web-based publishing. Counterbalancing their ignorance was a love for argument. This major cultural difference was demonstrated throughout my time in Israel; when teaching I found these "battles" to be exciting. No one ever blindly accepted what I said. They insisted on testing me with counterexamples and opposing views. Fortunately I never provide inflexible rules to students; in fact, I'm against them in principle. I teach the process and procedures of evaluation and invite each individual to index according to her own priorities and those of the readers. Thanks to this good-natured stubbornness, I spent more time than planned on several subjects. It may also be that these writers were not prepared to give up many of their preconceived notions about indexing. This argumentative style lead to frequent questions and participation, usually about practical considerations that disallow the ideal situation. For example, after discussing how many locators are acceptable after a main heading, a writer argued HTML indexes couldn't be written that way, with URLs replacing page numbers. Similarly, after explaining the difference between see and see also, someone complained that hyperlinks for cross references were impossible in PDF. Each time I would repeat that every situation is different, and that there are no inflexible answers. Anything that leads to greater usability is good, anything that doesn't lead to greater usability is a waste of time, and it's the writer's responsibility to define the concept of "usability" itself. Another cultural difference was impatience. Overall the participants gave me high ratings on keeping their attention, but when it came to exercises, few participants were willing to work on anything for long. I found 15 minutes to be the outside limit; they started to get bored and distracted. (I have to comment that this behavior may unique to the classroom and not indicative of their personalities overall. I hope so, because otherwise indexing will be a greater chore for them than I imagined.) By the third seminar, then, I kept my exercises short, asking questions about participants' experiences instead of their answers. In summary, I am concerned that indexing is not receiving any recognition among these highly intelligent and thoughtful technical writers. The high-tech industry in Israel continues to grow quickly, and many of the writers in these companies are immigrants from English-speaking countries. Israel's communist history, which is embedded in the corporate culture, means that indexing can be announced anywhere within the chain of command. (The management hierarchy is ignored when it comes to communication, such that a mailroom clerk can complain directly to a company vice president.) Perhaps the best approach to instilling good indexing habits is with the writers themselves, such as through the Society for Technical Communication. But a printed article is unlikely to prove effective: With whom do the writers get to argue?”
Seth Maislin
Potomac Indexing, LLC
seth.maislin@potomacindexing.com
http://taxonomist.tripod.com
Next column’s topic: the importance of indexes. Later!
Shoshana Hurwitz
Hurwitz Indexing
Elephant indexing column introduction
For as long as I can remember, I have always had an interest in the beauty of the written word, though often I was made by the people around me to seem like a crazy perfectionist when it came to not only my own writing, but especially the writing of others. My mother, with a background in English, was the only one I knew who shared my “obsession” with language, and even as a child remember the contests that she and I would have on Shabbat afternoons as to which one of us would find more typos in the book each of us had picked out from the library the day before. At the time, I was not aware of the multitude of professions there were to choose from that related to writing. All I knew was that she shared her love of books and libraries so much with me and my brother that it was inevitable that not only one, not only both, but both of us and my sister-in-law as well, would all eventually become librarians.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here. After playing the librarian in a variety of elementary school plays, doing a high school internship at my local Jewish library, and more editing than writing for my school newspaper, I majored in journalism at Stern College. The publishing field beckoned to me, but after a few short-term jobs I didn’t feel like I had truly reached my professional calling. So, after a few years of unsatisfying work outside of the field and a move back to my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, a “help wanted” sign on the circulation desk of my favorite childhood library at exactly the same time I was ready to go back to work after a too-long maternity leave was just the thing I needed to remind me in which direction to go.
I loved library work and requested several times to be moved to different departments so I could get a taste of everything it had to offer. It was less than a year later that I decided that, despite the fact that it would be harder to go back to school now that I had a family of my own to take care of and another baby on the way, I would take the plunge and get my master’s degree in library science, timing my schooling so that I would graduate when the kids had both started school. In my mind, everything was going along perfectly. I couldn’t wait to start working as a professional librarian full-time. That is, until I graduated and started looking for a professional position. No “real” jobs were to be had, not in the three libraries where I had worked during my time before and in school and not anywhere else locally, despite months of searching, interviews and false hopes. Nobody told me about THIS in library school!
There was only one thing that kept me from becoming completely dejected and feeling like the last three years of hard work were all for nothing. In my second-to-last semester of school, a fellow student happened to mention totally in passing to me that I seemed to have a real knack for abstraction, or summarizing. In response, the teacher asked the class if any of us had considered indexing as a career alternative to librarianship. I honestly and truly had not, but after only one day of intensive internet research about indexing as a profession, my only thought was, “How did it take so long for me to discover this?” After finding out that most professional indexers work freelance, I was a little nervous thinking about all the things that starting a business entailed, but I was so excited to find out that yes, I can actually get paid to be a crazy perfectionist when it came to the writing of others, that the business aspect was small peanuts.
I couldn’t wait to get started training, not even waiting the last few months until I was done with library school. I signed up for an internet-based correspondence course with one of the top indexing teachers in America on the basics of learning how to index and start an indexing business. Diving in head-first, my teacher said I was a natural indexer and I was thrilled that the nagging question “What should I do when I grow up?” was finally answered in my mind.
I have been lucky enough in the nearly two years that have passed since my day of epiphany to build up a successful freelance business. Indexing makes up only part of what I do for my clients. Sometimes books need to be indexed and also copyedited, proofread, or have a bibliography added, and I will sometimes offer a discount for doing multiple services on the same book. Sometimes publishers refer my services to authors, and sometimes authors refer me to publishers. Sometimes authors will send me a pile of scribbles and ask me to magically transform them into a bestseller, also known as developmental editing. I have a regular gig editing paranormal romance fiction for The Wild Rose Press, as well as one writing book and CD reviews for the Association of Jewish Libraries. I have gotten many jobs as well from colleagues who are overbooked or who know of my specialization in Judaica. Once in a blue moon, I have a free evening to work on my own writing and hope to one day get my fiction published. All in all, I am very happy with the way my business has been growing, and my day-to-day operations are constantly changing and keep me on my toes. I am also constantly marveling that I learn more “random stuff” by indexing and editing than I ever did as a budding librarian! So, here I am, ready to educate you all in the Israeli freelancing world about the wonder contained in the back of most books that makes its contents all that much more valuable.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here. After playing the librarian in a variety of elementary school plays, doing a high school internship at my local Jewish library, and more editing than writing for my school newspaper, I majored in journalism at Stern College. The publishing field beckoned to me, but after a few short-term jobs I didn’t feel like I had truly reached my professional calling. So, after a few years of unsatisfying work outside of the field and a move back to my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, a “help wanted” sign on the circulation desk of my favorite childhood library at exactly the same time I was ready to go back to work after a too-long maternity leave was just the thing I needed to remind me in which direction to go.
I loved library work and requested several times to be moved to different departments so I could get a taste of everything it had to offer. It was less than a year later that I decided that, despite the fact that it would be harder to go back to school now that I had a family of my own to take care of and another baby on the way, I would take the plunge and get my master’s degree in library science, timing my schooling so that I would graduate when the kids had both started school. In my mind, everything was going along perfectly. I couldn’t wait to start working as a professional librarian full-time. That is, until I graduated and started looking for a professional position. No “real” jobs were to be had, not in the three libraries where I had worked during my time before and in school and not anywhere else locally, despite months of searching, interviews and false hopes. Nobody told me about THIS in library school!
There was only one thing that kept me from becoming completely dejected and feeling like the last three years of hard work were all for nothing. In my second-to-last semester of school, a fellow student happened to mention totally in passing to me that I seemed to have a real knack for abstraction, or summarizing. In response, the teacher asked the class if any of us had considered indexing as a career alternative to librarianship. I honestly and truly had not, but after only one day of intensive internet research about indexing as a profession, my only thought was, “How did it take so long for me to discover this?” After finding out that most professional indexers work freelance, I was a little nervous thinking about all the things that starting a business entailed, but I was so excited to find out that yes, I can actually get paid to be a crazy perfectionist when it came to the writing of others, that the business aspect was small peanuts.
I couldn’t wait to get started training, not even waiting the last few months until I was done with library school. I signed up for an internet-based correspondence course with one of the top indexing teachers in America on the basics of learning how to index and start an indexing business. Diving in head-first, my teacher said I was a natural indexer and I was thrilled that the nagging question “What should I do when I grow up?” was finally answered in my mind.
I have been lucky enough in the nearly two years that have passed since my day of epiphany to build up a successful freelance business. Indexing makes up only part of what I do for my clients. Sometimes books need to be indexed and also copyedited, proofread, or have a bibliography added, and I will sometimes offer a discount for doing multiple services on the same book. Sometimes publishers refer my services to authors, and sometimes authors refer me to publishers. Sometimes authors will send me a pile of scribbles and ask me to magically transform them into a bestseller, also known as developmental editing. I have a regular gig editing paranormal romance fiction for The Wild Rose Press, as well as one writing book and CD reviews for the Association of Jewish Libraries. I have gotten many jobs as well from colleagues who are overbooked or who know of my specialization in Judaica. Once in a blue moon, I have a free evening to work on my own writing and hope to one day get my fiction published. All in all, I am very happy with the way my business has been growing, and my day-to-day operations are constantly changing and keep me on my toes. I am also constantly marveling that I learn more “random stuff” by indexing and editing than I ever did as a budding librarian! So, here I am, ready to educate you all in the Israeli freelancing world about the wonder contained in the back of most books that makes its contents all that much more valuable.
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