CHICAGO/GREAT LAKES CHAPTER, ASI
October 24 & 25, 2008
Fall Workshops Featuring Enid Zafran, John Wean, and Do Mi Stauber

Hilton Garden Inn
2930 South River Road, Des Plaines, IL 60018

Friday, October 24:
Editing an Index (Enid Zafran)

Editing the index is more than just looking for errors. Enid Zafran, a well-known indexer who writes a column for Key Words on indexing style, will draw from her extensive experience to present a program on the ins and outs of editing the index. She will also include an exercise for actually editing an index.

Friday, October 24:
The Publishing Process (John Wean)

Publishing cycles: Do you really know what happens? What is the role of the indexer in the book production process? These questions and more will be answered by John Wean, Vice President of Educational Publishing Services, of the Black Dot Group in Crystal Lake, Illinois.

Saturday, October 25:
Taming the Wild Project List: Organizing Tools for the Complex Life (Do Mi Stauber)

This new workshop by Do Mi Stauber, author of Facing the Text: Content and Structure in Book Indexing, is designed to help the busy freelance professional. This will be the first time Do Mi will present the full-day version of her new workshop.

Indexers, in fact all freelancers, are notorious for the complexity of their lives. Besides juggling multiple professional deadlines and managing the usual home and community responsibilities, they tend to be deeply involved in many other creative interests.

Popular workshop presenter Do Mi Stauber, a connoisseur of time management systems for many years, has found a combination of organizing tools that enables her to excel in many areas of her multifaceted life. Her new participatory workshop provides participants with a toolkit for managing daily tasks, deadlines, multiple ongoing projects, and creative new ideas.

Various strategies will be covered in this full-day workshop, including

• A flexible task organization system that promotes calm and clarity by creating conceptual homes for all of your tasks, projects, and ideas?
• Mindmapping techniques for brainstorming, planning, and collecting information, using the natural strengths of the creative brain?
• Strategies for welcoming multiple interests and projects, and integrating them into a sane and balanced life.

A complete workshop brochure, including specific details, hotel information, registration costs, and more will be posted in the summer on our chapter Web site at http://www.chicagogreatlakesindexers.org/events.html. We look forward to seeing you in Chicago in October.

Florida Indexers are pleased to recommend…
 
Space Tech Chapter of STC
April Program Meeting
Date: Wednesday 23 April 2008
Time: Networking 6:00-6:30 pm Program 6:30-8:00
Location: Piccadilly Cafeteria Meeting Room
Melbourne Square Mall
1700 W. New Haven (US Highway 192)
Melbourne, FL 32904
Presentation: Creating Web A-Z Indexes
Speaker: Heather Hedden

About the Presentation: An A-Z site index for a Web site, sub-site, or intranet can be a useful tool. As Web sites grow in size and complexity, users need additional means beyond the navigational menu and a site map to search for the information they want. Unless a site is very large, an onsite search engine often does not retrieve satisfactory results. Browsable A-Z indexes, a format familiar to users from the back of books, can provide highly accurate retrieval. Index entries are hyperlinked to the desired text within a Web page or to an anchored point within the page. This presentation will explain when and where an A-Z index is the best option for site searching, the basics of how to create a hyperlinked index, and what software tools are available.

About the Speaker: Heather Hedden is an information taxonomist with Viziant Corporation in Boston and a freelance book and Web site indexer through Hedden Information Management. Previously she worked as a controlled vocabulary editor with Gale (formerly Information Access Company). Heather teaches online workshops in Web site indexing and taxonomies through the continuing education program of Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science and has given numerous live conference workshops on Web site indexing. In 2007 she published the book Indexing Specialties: Web Sites through ASI and Information Today Inc. She has also published many articles on the subject.

For more information on the topic or speaker visit www.hedden-information.com

Space Tech Chapter of STC Website: www.stc-spacetech.org

Soft drinks and light refreshments will be served.

Golden Gate Chapter
UPCOMING EVENTS:
 
June 7, 2008
"Golden Gate Indexing Summer Olympics"
Fort Mason Center, San Francisco
More details to come.
 
August 16, 2008
"Indexing Niches: Commonalities and Differences among Various Specialties"
presented by Sylvia Coates
Orinda Library (tentative)
More details to come.

Spring 2008 Meeting
Heartland Chapter, American Society for Indexing
Saturday, April 5, 2008
10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Richmond, Indiana

Presenting: Carol Roberts
"Marketing: Building a New Business and Enhancing an Existing One"

In the fall of 2007, Carol Roberts hired a business coach and has since expanded her business, trained a team of indexers, and learned new approaches to marketing. The results have been phenomenal, and she is eager to share with us everything she knows about target markets, print ads, trade shows, tracking results, costs of marketing, networking, and—believe it or not—cold calling!

Carol Roberts has been indexing for over 14 years and has more than 600 books under her belt. She has been helping her fellow indexers with their marketing for many years. You may have heard of her workshop "Marketing for the Shy" (among others), which she's given both at ASI conferences and to ASI chapters. She is also a past secretary and board member of ASI.

$30 - ASI members
$35 - non-members who have been to a Heartland meeting previously
$25 - first-time attendees (members and non-members)

Also Presenting:
"Jumping in With One Foot" by Cathy Seckman

If you're a little afraid of getting your feet wet with an indexing business, it can be all right to start with just one foot. Heartland President-Elect Cathy Seckman will share her story of beginning a limited indexing career while still keeping a day job. She'll describe the intricate, frustrating, and occasionally fun process of getting both feet to work in tandem.

For information about location, directions, pre-registration, hotels, or schedule for the day, contact Marilyn Augst at Marilyn@PrairieMoonIndexing.com or see the Heartland website.

Kansas-Missouri Group St. Louis Meeting
Thursday, Nov. 8, 2007
6:30 pm

St. Louis Bread Company
147 Westport Plaza
(314) 579-0506

RSVP to Steven Falk, steven.falk@sbcglobal.net

Which Path Did You Follow? Understanding our Index Decision-Making is a workshop led by two of America’s acknowledged indexing experts, Sherry Smith and Kari Kells. This participatory workshop is based on the fascinating phenomenon that all indexes for the same text will differ. Without knowing who wrote what, workshop participants will explore the decisions apparent in each other's indexes.

Prior the workshop, Kari and Sherry will select anonymous examples from the submitted indexes that offer discussion opportunities. They will focus on the primary principles of indexing and how we handled them in the indexes: making decisions about readers; identifying the metatopic; analyzing the text; determining the appropriate level of detail; gathering scattered and similar information; remaining consistent with depth, structure, and wording; providing multiple access routes; and phrasing entries for brevity and usefulness.

This workshop is designed for indexers who are familiar with indexing terms and have completed an indexing project. Practice indexes and course assignments do count!

Register early as the homework for this workshop is due well before the workshop begins! You will be asked to prepare an index for a short text and your index must be submitted to allow sufficient time for Kari and Sherry’s professional analysis before the workshop.

Discounted registrations are due by February 22, 2008. Assigned index homework is due March 10, 2008.

Directions to the Bethesda Service Center: Metro fare to the Bethesda Station, on Metro’s Red Line, is $2-/+ one-way from most other Metro stations. Find Metro information at www.wmata.com . From I495, take the Wisconsin Avenue exit south toward Bethesda. Just past the campus of the National Institutes of Health, on your right, and the Naval Medical Center, on your left, veer right onto Woodmont Road. Follow Woodmont Road for several blocks, moving into the left lane. After you cross Old Georgetown Road, turn left into the parking garage of our building. If you miss the garage entrance, try to make the next left turn onto Edgemoor Lane. There is another garage entrance on Edgemoor Lane. Parking should be free on Saturday, but bring some quarters just in case

Please go to the Chapter website (www.msasindexing.org) for more information about the location, and for travel and housing options. You can download a registration form there as well.

New England Chapter of the American Society for Indexing (NEASI)

Annual Spring Meeting
Saturday, April 5, 2008
9:30 am to 3:30 pm

Chelmsford Public Library
25 Boston Road; Chelmsford, MA  01824

Please join us for the following program:

The Freelance Taxonomy Business, presented by Heather Hedden
There is a growing demand for "taxonomy" and controlled vocabulary work, much of which is freelance. Indexers are well-suited for this kind of work based on the relationship between indexing and controlled vocabularies and also based on the similar skills needed. Even with the skills, where does one find the work? This presentation (a preview to the upcoming full-day pre-conference workshop at the ASI conference in Denver on April 30) defines different kinds of taxonomies, looks at the types of taxonomy and controlled vocabulary projects available, discusses the different types of freelance clients, and offers marketing tips.

Heather Hedden is an information taxonomist at Viziant Corporation. Prior to this position she was a freelance taxonomy developer and indexer, and before that she was a controlled vocabulary editor with Thomson Gale. She is also a continuing education instructor at Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science, through which she is teaching a new online workshop on taxonomies in April. Heather is manager of the Taxonomies & Controlled Vocabularies SIG and is a past-president of the NEASI.

Editing Your Index: A Panel Discussion with Steve Csipke, Linda Dunn, and Joan Shapiro
How do indexers edit their indexes? The panelists will share some of their tips and tricks for editing, both during the index process and with the final draft index, covering back-of-the book indexes as well as indexes for periodicals and databases. We'll also discuss special situations like difficult projects, poorly edited text, indexing while final editing is happening, and updating or rekeying an existing index for a new edition. We'll talk about what editors expect and how they approach indexes submitted to them. We'll also touch on the challenges of editing ongoing work in large indexing projects involving several indexers. Bring your questions and examples of editing problems you have faced or tips you would like to share.

Steve Csipke has a MSLS from Case Western Reserve University and a Certificate in Technical Writing from Northeastern University. After working as a freelance indexer for 10 years, he became a salaried technical writer, editor, and indexer for software manuals and online help systems. Currently he is a Senior Technical Editor at a financial services firm where he structures, edits, and indexes content for several intranets. He has been a member of the Society for Technical Communication since 1983 and of ASI since the 1970s. Steve is Vice President/President-Elect of the NEASI.

Linda Dunn has been a periodical indexer for 30 years and currently works as a freelance indexer and abstractor for several periodical databases. She was both the editor and an indexer for the print index, Film Literature Index, an international index to film and television magazines. She has also done name reconciliation work and written scope notes (subject term definitions) for several large thesauri. Linda has given presentations on periodical indexing and developing controlled vocabularies. She is a member of the New England and the New York chapters of ASI and moderator of the new Periodical//Database Indexing Discussion Group, which hopes to become an ASI SIG.

Joan Shapiro is an experienced freelance back-of-the-book indexer. She produces mainly back-of-the-book indexes for publishers of textbooks and trade books in such subjects as nutrition/culinary arts, law, psychology, history, communications, and children's books. Joan is a past president of the NEASI.

The Business Side of Indexing: Roundtable Discussions
Need help with the business side of your indexing work? We will be holding roundtable discussions on various business-related topics such as getting that first indexing job and other marketing strategies, negotiating terms and rates, and scheduling. We are asking for your suggestions regarding which topics you would like covered. For more information, see the complete meeting details and Registration Form on our website at www.newenglandindexers.org/events.htm.

NEASI Business Meeting will follow the Roundtable Discussions. All members of NEASI are encouraged to participate.

Food and Beverages: There will be a Continental Breakfast and Lunch available for a nominal fee.

Advanced Registration is requested by Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Complete meeting details, directions, and Registration Form are on our website at www.newenglandindexers.org/events.htm.

New York City Chapter
of the
American Society for Indexing

Indexing James Joyce

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 at 6:30
Jefferson Market Library auditorium
425 Avenue of the Americas [at 10th St.]

free to everybody

In celebration of St. Patrick's Day, the New York City Chapter of the American Society for Indexing announces our March meeting. Charlee Trantino will present a talk about her 2006 Wilson award index to A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake: Unlocking James Joyce’s Masterwork, by Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson.

When the stream-of-consciousness–style Finnegans Wake was published in 1939, critics called it "unintelligible." Others, such as Joseph Campbell, wanted to figure it out. Joseph Campbell and poet Henry Morton Robinson's A Skeleton Key was the first guide to Joyce's masterwork. It solved many of the puzzles Joyce presented, but earlier editions had no index. The elegance of the index and its appropriateness for the work and for its scholarly audience are what make it an exemplar. Charlee will discuss how she constructed this index for this new standard in literary criticism.

Fall 2008 Meeting

Saturday, August 23, 2008, 8 a.m.–6 p.m.
Bastyr University
14500 Juanita Drive
Kenmore, Washington

Please watch the PNW/ASI Web site for more details.

The Pittsburgh Group is trying to form again.  We had a small but successful initial meeting on Sat., January 20, 2007, at the home of Susan Cohen.  Diana Witt, ASI's Chapter Liaison, came and gave an extremely useful talk on Time Management. She then spoke on ideas to build up our chapter, and gave us several useful suggestions about other organizations to contact for potential future collaborations.

Anyone interested in finding out more about this group should contact Susan Solomon.

Rocky Mountain Chapter of ASI
Fall Meeting
Saturday, October 6, 2007
9:00 am–4:00 pm

A Presentation on Controlled Vocabularies
by Fred Leise

Location:

Community College of Denver, Auraria Campus
1111 West Colfax Avenue
Denver, CO 80121

See the following link for a map: http://www.tivoli.org/tivoli/map.html

Program:
9:00–9:30 Registration and networking
9:30–12:30 Morning session Controlled Vocabularies
12:30–1:30 Luncheon (see registration form for lunch selections)
1:30–2:30 Afternoon session Controlled Vocabularies
2:45–4:00 Practicum

Cost:
$65 ASI members prior to September 25
$80 ASI non-members prior to September 25
$75 ASI members after September 25
$90 ASI non-members after September 25

For more information and registration form please visit our chapter web site at http://www.asicolorado.org/.

The SOUTH CENTRAL CHAPTER of ASI
ANNOUNCES ITS FALL 2007 MEETING

Saturday, November 3, 2007
8:30 a.m.–4:00 p.m.
The Woodlands, Texas

Our program will be in three parts:

Wilson Award of 2007. Kay Banning, Wilson Award Committee Chair, Joanne Sprott, a Wilson Award Committee judge, and Ellen Todd Hanks, a first time Wilson Award Committee judge, will discuss the process and criteria that were used to determine this year's winner.

Peer Index Review. Kay Schlembach will speak on the guidelines used by ASI Lesson Evaluators in reviewing submitted indexes. Attendees will then review indexes in a small group setting. Each group will be moderated by an experienced indexer. After all groups have had their opportunity to review, groups will combine to share their findings. All attendees are encouraged to submit indexes for review, either their own or one that they select. Additional details will be provided via email to each attendee.

It's Anniversary Party Time. ASI is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year and our Chapter is celebrating as well. Please come and help us celebrate. We will honor our founders and look at our history.

Where:

Woodlands (South Montgomery) Community Center

2235 Lake Robbins Drive (Lake Robbins at Grogan's Mill)

The Woodlands, TX 77380

For registrations received prior to October 19, 2007

ASI members: $45.00

Students (with proof): $35.00

Non-ASI members: $55.00

Late registration fees received after October 19, 2007

ASI members: $55.00

Students (with proof): $45.00

Non-ASI members: $65.00

NOTE: Bottled water, juice, continental breakfast and a boxed lunch are included in the registration fee. (A Starbucks and HEB with coffee bar are located nearby.)

For registrations received prior to October 19, 2007

ASI members: $45.00

Students (with proof): $35.00

Non-ASI members: $55.00

Late registrations received after October 19, 2007

Add $10.00

Paul Hightower

PO Box 101028

Fort Worth, TX 76185

ASI-SoCal invites you to lunch and a discussion on...

Creating Elegant Subentries
Saturday, February 16, 2008
10:30 to about 3:00
At the home of Anne Leach in Palm Desert, California

Presented by Vicky Agee and Margie Towery, this presentation will focus on the fun part of designing back-of-the-book indexes: the creation of subentries.

As any indexer knows, construction of elegant subentries calls for careful consideration of wording and format. Our two experts will discuss several aspects of the process, such as choosing terms, gathering, flipping, doubleposting, sorting, reanalyzing, and so on. They will bring many illustrative specimens, but also hope participants will bring examples of their own to talk about.

This is a special opportunity to pick the brains of two of ASI’s best indexers. This luncheon is a below-cost bargain at only $47 (ASI members) and $58 (non-members). It’s being subsidized with a generous grant from ASI National. To register, send a your check, payable to ASI-SoCal, to:

Anne Leach
78240 Bonanza Drive
Palm Desert, CA 92211
Directions to Anne’s will be emailed when your registration is confirmed.

Between them, Margie Towery and Vicky Agee have 55 years of indexing experience:

Margie Towery has worked in the publishing field for over twenty years. For the last fifteen years, she has been a freelance indexer focused on scholarly texts. She has edited two Indexing Specialties books for ASI, one of which includes her essay, "The Quality of a Scholarly Index: A Contribution to the Discourse." She won the H. W. Wilson Award in 2002 for the cumulative index to The Letters of Matthew Arnold, 6 vols., edited by Cecil Lang and published by the University Press of Virginia. More recently, she indexed the 15th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. Towery lives in the middle of two acres of woods in Indiana with her husband, two dogs, and four cats.

Victoria Agee is Director of Agee Indexing Services in Houston, TX. She has worked for public, university, and special libraries, and has had cataloging and indexing contracts with the Congressional Research Service, the National Agricultural Library, the National Library of Medicine, and the Smithsonian Institution. She has over 35 years of experience working in libraries and doing back-of-the-book, database and periodical indexing for corporate, trade and university publishers from coast to coast. Ms. Agee holds an MLS degree from UCLA and has presented workshops on indexing throughout the United States. She is an active member of the Special Libraries Association, the American Medical Writers Association, as well as the American Society of Indexers. She is currently teaching the University of California Berkeley Extension online course in the Theory and Application of Indexing.

Wow! What a great opportunity!

We look forward to seeing you, learning, and enjoying the day!

Twin Cities ASI Chapter Meeting
Saturday, March 8, 2008, 9:00 AM

Location
Classroom 234
William Mitchell Law College
875 Summit Avenue, St. Paul
(see driving directions below)

Meeting Agenda
9:00–9:30: Registration and Networking
9:30–10:00: Brief Chapter business meeting and announcements
10:00–12:00: Program—Website Indexes
12:00–Drawing for door prizes! And, for those interested, lunch at a nearby restaurant

Website Indexes
Once considered a rather archaic approach to providing organizational pointers to web content, indexes are becoming a more common element of website design. Also called A–Z topics, online indexes, or site indexes, this approach can provide as useful a function as back-of-book indexes, provided they are based on good indexing practice. This presentation will discuss which indexing precepts translate well to the web, what is different from back-of-book or other traditional indexing, and some examples.

Eileen Quam is a librarian and information architect at the Minnesota Office of Enterprise Technology. In this role she provides guidance in organizing the State web portal (soon to become Minnesota.gov) and agency websites, and in implementing document management systems. She is adjunct faculty at St. Catherine's Graduate School of Library and Information Science, teaching coursework in indexing, abstracting, and metadata. She has been a freelance indexer since the 1980s, particularly in the realms of academic and legal publishing.

*** While supplies last, Indexes: A Chapter from CMS 15 will be available for purchase at the meeting at a 20% discount from publisher's price.

Driving directions
From I-94 take the Lexington Parkway exit. Turn right on Lexington Parkway and continue to Summit Avenue. Turn left on Summit Avenue and continue to Victoria. (William Mitchell is on your left). Turn left on Victoria and left into parking lot.

Security instructions
On weekends the College locks all doors and requires non-WM visitors to enter through the front doors (by the flagpole) and to sign in at the visitor's desk.

Questions
Call Galen Schroeder (office: 701-298-6304; cell: 701-541-0055)
or e-mail at: galenschroeder@msn.com

Reminder
Every meeting is a networking opportunity. Bring business cards to share!!!

Western New York ASI Chapter—Spring Meeting
Friday, April 4, 2008

Join us for a brief tour and overview of Thomson/West's operation in Rochester, NY. Thomson/West is a legal publishing firm with one of their offices in Rochester.

We'll meet at Thomson/West for a tour of their operation in the morning. Lyle Warren, one of our chapter members who works at Thomson/West, has graciously arranged for us to have lunch onsite after the tour. After lunch, we will have an informal panel discussion with legal indexers, attorney-editors, and others.

Thomson/West is located in downtown Rochester at:
50 E. Broad St
Rochester, NY 14694
(585) 546-5530
http://west.thomson.com

Agenda:

• 10:45 AM – meet in front entrance of Thomson/West at 50 Broad St
• 11 AM to 12 PM – tour of Thomson/West facility
• 12 PM to 1 PM – lunch at Thomson/West
• 1 PM to 1:30 PM – panel discussion
• 1:30 PM to 2 PM – chapter meeting

Cost: $10

Space is limited! Reserve your spot by sending a check , made out to Western NY Chapter of ASI, to:

Judy Kip
3 Courtly Circle
Owego, NY 13827

Questions? Contact: Peg Mauer (pmauer2004@yahoo.com), 518-359-8616 or Judy Kip (judithkip@earthlink.net), 
607-687-0993.

Directions to Thomson/West: Click on this link: http://tinyurl.com/23uomq or cut and paste the URL into your browser. 

There are only two hotels within walking distance of Thomson/West, but they are both kind of expensive.

Clarion Riverside Hotel (0.3 miles)
www.clarionriversidehotel.com/
800-916-4614

Hyatt Regenecy Rochester (0.3 miles, but about $180/night)
www.Hyatt.com
866-226-6223

There are many more reasonable rooms available a bit further out. See www.hotels.com