Sessions

Friday, June 20 Breakout Sessions

• Friday June 20, 8:00 - 8:45 AM
  Starting Your Indexing Business - Carolyn Weaver
  Once you've obtained the necessary training in indexing, how do you launch a successful freelance business? This session offers a practical discussion of the factors to consider in starting an indexing business, including survival strategies until the business takes off, state and local licensing considerations, marketing for the inexperienced, equipping a home office, financial management, and business taxes and deductions.
• Friday June 20, 8:00 - 9:45 AM
  Abstracting: From Basic Indicative Abstracts to Critical Abstracts - Ina Fourie
  The presentation will cover the basic guidelines for writing indicative, informative, critical and structured abstracts. It will start with an explanation of abstracting, the different types of abstracts and the reasons for writing abstracts. The steps in abstracting, the basic guidelines for abstracts in general, the effect of abstracts on online searching, the need to assess the value of abstracts and the use of standards and textbooks will also be covered.
• Friday June 20, 8:00 - 9:45 AM
  Managing a Multi-Volume Indexing Project: An Evolutionary Approach - Cynthia Berman, Ellen Perry, and Jan C. Wright
  Technical indexing is evolving from the traditional, single-volume book index to multi-volume, dynamic merged indexes in the HTML model. Join us as we discuss the foundations common to both models. We'll explore the role of indexing standards - including a controlled vocabulary and an indexing style guide - and editing of a merged, multi-volume index. We'll also present techniques for managing multi-volume projects, and discuss metadata's evolving role. Although our focus is on technical documentation, the material is adaptable to many disciplines.
• Friday June 20, 8:00 - 9:45 AM
  CANCELLED*. Speaking in Tongues: Indexing of Foreign Language Materials
• Friday June 20, 8:00 - 9:45 AM
  Judging Excellence in Indexes: Demystifying the Process
  Of interest to future Wilson Award submitters, editors, peer reviewers, and other indexers interested in improving the quality of their work. This workshop will discuss both the process used by the Wilson Award panel to judge indexes, and ways of applying Wilson Award criteria during the indexing process. Past award-winning indexes will be available and will be used as the basis for discussion, criteria for excellence will be reviewed, and the Wilson Award judging process and guidelines will be described. Laura Moss Gottlieb was chair of the Wilson Award Committee this year; both Laura and Janet Perlman have served as judges for this award in prior years. In 1998, Laura received the Wilson Award for Excellence for "Dead Wrong: A Death Row Lawyer Speaks Out Against Capital Punishment."
• Friday June 20, 9:00 - 9:45 AM
  Writing Your Own Paycheck - Larry D. Sweazy
  Overcome the fear of financial failure by learning to budget each paycheck, schedule pay cycles, and save for the future, to insure your survival as a freelance indexer.
• Friday June 20, 10:00 - 11:00 AM
  How to Build a Classification Scheme - Seth A. Maislin
  Think you might make a good taxonomist? Attend this overview of how to build a NISO Z39.19 compliant thesaurus for the classification of products, services or bibliographic materials. Examples from industry and United Nations code revision projects, as well as practical advice on hierarchy, concept blocking, syntax and naming conventions. Presented by an experienced taxonomist and former cataloger.
• Friday June 20, 10:00 - 11:00 AM
  Designing Indexes from Shared Content for Multiple Delivery Formats - Dorthea Atwater
  This session addresses the challenge of developing indexes from shared content for mass-market consumer technical manuals that must work in multiple output formats, including print, PDF, and HTML
  
• Friday June 20, 10:15 - Noon
  How to Develop a Style Guide - Deborah Patton and L. Pilar Wyman
  In this workshop, attendees will learn how to develop comprehensive index style guides that will ensure quality indexes for all their publications in a variety of media. We will discuss what to consider before beginning indexing, types of indexes, index format, headings, alphabetization, cross-references, locators, levels of entry, and indexable matter. Discussion will cover different media (books, manuals, periodicals, Web sites, online documents, embedded texts, etc.) as well as different subject specialties. Attendees will receive a "Considerations for an Index Style Guide" check sheet and copies of the speakers' PowerPoint (PPT) slides. After completing this workshop attendees will be able to revise and create effective index style guides.
• Friday June 20, 10:15 - Noon
  Technical Indexing Progression - Jan C. Wright
  Come discuss your technical indexing questions with a panel of experts in an intimate small-group setting. The technical indexers' progression will feature Dick Evans, Jan Wright, Seth Maislin, Janet Perlman, Cheryl Landes, and more. A short introduction to each indexer's specialties and a handout will help you choose the tables you want to visit. Bring your questions about technical indexing tools, subjects, and methods, such as working in Frame, working on engineering materials, figuring out single-sourcing, or doing online indexing
• Friday June 20, 11:00 - Noon
  User-Oriented Representation of Documents for Interactive IR: Connecting Beyond-Topical Criteria of User-Defined Relevance with the Surrogate Features of an IR Database - Yang-Woo Kim
  While a body of related literature has indicated a need to develop mechanisms that represent beyond topical aspects of documents, there has been little work examining index terms prepared by formal bibliographic apparatus with respect to such representation. This paper identifies non-topical features of documents from a set of surrogate records collected from an IR database (ERIC), discussing the strengths and limitations of those features. The application of user-defined relevance criteria to further develop such aspects of indexing is discussed. This paper may be accessed online.
• Friday June 20, 11:00 - Noon
  Enhancing Productivity through Technology - David K. Ream and Enid Zafran
  Do you have trouble locating files? Are all your files jumbled into one folder? What is a shortcut and why would I use one? When would custom programming pay off on a project? An experienced indexer and a programmer discuss and share tips and stories to help you be more productive, avoid disasters, and have peace of mind. Utilities that improve accuracy and quality will also be demonstrated.
• Friday June 20, 1:30 - 3:15 PM
  Getting It Right: Indexing for Specific Audience and Text - Sylvia Coates
  The focus of this session is on how to practically approach indexing university scholarly text, nonuniversity scholarly text, textbook, and tradebook material-the differences in format, audience, author agenda, and customary publisher format specifications for these specific types of text. Also includes material on special considerations of author/name indexes, scripture indexes, locorums (classical citations), and poem and song indexes. Term selection examples appropriate for scholarly, textbook, and tradebook text are also presented.
• Friday June 20, 1:30 - 4:30 PM
  Mapping The Meanings - Christine Jacobs
  This review of the principles of back-of-the-book indexing focuses on recognizing and meeting readers' needs, and on determining and mapping the levels of meaning in a text. Participants index a short interesting text and edit an index. This is a great opportunity to brush up on your skills, to contemplate the difficulties posed by multiple layers of meaning, and to discuss the issues with other indexers. Suitable for beginning and experienced indexers.
• Friday June 20, 1:30 - 4:30 PM
  Legal Indexing: Specialties Within the Specialty - Enid Zafran, Robert Creeden, Joe Schneider, Jim Diggins, Linda Rainaldi, Madeleine Davis
  Aimed at both beginning and experienced legal indexers, this session will cover various types of legal publications and subject specialties within law, including tax and intellectual property; statutory codes, practice/CLE books, and textbooks; and electronic documents and the creation of electronic indexes. The panel of experienced indexers will discuss how to approach starting a new work from scratch as well as updating existing indexes. Each of these publication forms and subject areas has its own peculiarities, and the indexers will address what is unique to each type. Examples of indexes and methodologies will be shown.
• Friday June 20, 1:30 - 4:30 PM
  Windows/MS Office: Skills for Indexers and Editors - Gale Rhoads
  Learn basic Windows, Word, Excel, and Internet Explorer operations including tips on configuring automatic system maintenance, protecting yourself from virus and worm infections, keyboard shortcuts and much more. Learn how to become more productive with the most important tool in your office, one which should be (but rarely is) as easy to use as a pencil sharpener. Handouts will provide a handy reminder of the items covered as well as additional information designed to help you operate more efficiently and profitably.
• Friday June 20, 3:30 - 4:30 PM
  REVIEW - Field Trip: Beyond Indexing Software - Jan C. Wright
  Join us for a quick tour of software packages that indexers today may need to use to meet a variety of indexing environments and requirements. We will take a quick look at add-ons and tools ranging from Ixgen for Frame, RoboHELP, TermTree, MultiTes, Logik, ProCite, Acrobat, and other software an indexer may want to try for a particular problem or situation.
• Friday June 20, 4:30 - 6:00 PM
  In a plenary session in the Exhibits Area, software vendors will provide brief descriptions of their products. The fair will then continue with concurrent demonstrations in the Exhibits Area and adjacent classrooms. Times of product demonstrations will be included in the on-site conference packet.

Saturday, June 21 Plenary Sessions

• Saturday June 21, 8:00 - 8:45 AM
  An Index Comparison Project: The Effects of Two Indexers' Diverse Backgrounds on Creating an Index from a Software Manual - Cheryl Landes and Debra Spidal
  Can an indexer's background and subject specialties affect the way he or she indexes a software manual? Two indexers, one with a non-technical background and the other with extensive technical indexing experience, decided to find out. Aside from following a basic set of guidelines commonly found in the software book publishing industry, each indexer worked on her own. Neither saw each other's work until it was completed. At that time, each person compared her index with the other's, and the results of that comparison are presented in this talk.
• Saturday June 21, 9:00 - 9:45 AM
  Indexes vs. Full-Text Search: A Usability Case Study - Dick Evans
  In the spring of 2002, Infodex Indexing Services, Inc. sponsored a usability test comparing a book index prepared by a professional indexer to a full-text search of the same book. The test was conducted by graduate students at Southern Polytechnic University in Marietta, GA, under the guidance of Dr. Carol Barnum, author of Usability Testing and Research. Hear Dick Evans of Infodex describe how and why the test was conducted and what it revealed about index usability.
• Saturday June 21, 10:15 - 11:00 AM
  How Can We Take a Socio-Cognitive Approach in Teaching Indexing and Abstracting? - Ina Fourie
  Innovative teaching methods for indexing and abstracting are discussed, with an emphasis on the socio-cognitive approach. Users should be considered as part of a larger group (e.g. people working in the same discipline or for a specific company), using a similar vocabulary. The purpose of teaching, the meaning of the socio-cognitive approach, a range of suggestions for teaching, portfolio assessment and the value of a project stimulating interest in information retrieval research will be covered.
• Saturday June 21, 11:00 - 11:30 AM
  USDA Indexing Course: A Panel Discussion
  Panelists will include two current instructors (Kari Kells and Pilar Wyman), a recent graduate of the basic indexing course (Galen Schroeder), and Michael T. Allen, director of the National Independent Study Center which now administers the USDA program.
• Saturday June 21, 11:15-Noon
  ASI Business Meeting
• Saturday June 21, Noon-2:00 PM
  AWARDS LUNCHEON
  Presentation of the ASI/ H.W. Wilson Award for Excellence in Indexing and the Hines Award for Service to ASI
• Saturday June 21, 2:00 - 2:45 PM
  Digital by Design: A Case Study in Creating a WebFriendly Cumulated Journal Index - Elspeth Richmond, Sheliagh Simpson, Susan Wilson Murray and Naomi Pauls
  In July of 2002 three "team indexers" from the Vancouver area, along with a colleague, were contracted to write a cumulated index for Archivaria, the professional journal of the Association of Canadian Archivists. They present their year-long project as a case study in the design and writing of a cumulated journal index destined for the Web, also touching on issues such as thesaurus construction, database design and large project management.
• Saturday June 21, 3:00 - 3:45 PM
  Getting Personal: Individualized Information Delivery - Seth A. Maislin
  Information delivery is becoming individualized, from custom documentation to targeted advertising. Today we get restaurant recommendations based on our momentary physical location, or record television shows based on our habits. Who collects this information, and how can it be leveraged? Our indexing skills are key. Push the limits of your imagination in this investigation and consider the benefits and pitfalls in our changing industry.
• Saturday June 21, 4:15-6:00 PM
  Closing Keynote Address: Jody Urqhuart - The Joy of Work... for Information Professionals
  OK, so you're busy. While you are dutifully doing your job, do you ever get a sense that you are disconnected from the purpose of your work? Are you unsure of the contribution that you make? Do you feel under-motivated and under-focused? Playing a support role, do you sometimes feel unappreciated? The Joy of Work re-focuses information professionals, knowledge managers, librarians and administrators, on the purpose of their work, as well as their individual contributions, awakening them to the true and satisfying meaning of their work. Through a humorous and fun approach, Jody's goal is to inspire you to be focused and productive.