See also Pre-Conference Workshops and Post-Conference Workshops.

NOTE: The complete program can be downloaded as a PDF file (6.4 MB), or you may request that a copy be mailed to you by contacting info@asindexing.org. The information here is preliminary. Last-minute changes to the conference program and speakers may not match the information contained here. Please write conference@asindexing.org if you require specific information.

You may register online [link disabled] or download and mail or fax a copy of the registration form in PDF format. Canadian residents should register at the IASC/SCAD website and not use this form.

3:00pm–7:00pm
Conference Registration

3:00pm–6:45pm
Exhibit Area Open

6:00pm–7:00pm
Welcome Reception
(Included for those who have registered for the full conference. Workshop attendees or one-day registrants may purchase tickets for the reception. See the registration form to purchase tickets.)

7:00pm–9:00pm
Conference Dinner and Keynote Address
The Lives of Writers
Eleanor Wachtel

(Included for those who have registered for the full conference. Workshop attendees or one-day registrants may purchase tickets for the dinner. See the registration form to purchase tickets.)

In this keynote address, Eleanor Wachtel looks at several aspects of the relationship between the writer and the work. First, she considers the appetite for literary biography and how greater knowledge of the life may affect the reader's appreciation of the work. Then, drawing on her personal experience as host of CBC Radio's "Writers & Company" and "The Arts Today," she presents specific instances of how writers reveal what is primary to them. The writer as exile or outsider provides the third focal point of this wide-ranging and idiosyncratic talk.

7:15am–5:00pm
Conference Registration

7:15am–8:15am
Breakfast and SIGs Informal Meetings

8:15am–9:30am
Morning Breakout Sessions

Choose One

Breakout Session 1: Managing Large Projects
Presenter: Diana Witt

Description forthcoming

Breakout Session 2: An Index Comparison Project, Part 2: The Effects of Indexers' Diverse Backgrounds on Creating an Index from an Essay Collection
Presenters: Cynthia Landeen and Cheryl Landes

Can an indexer's background and subject specialties affect the way he or she indexes a collection of essays written by a scholar? Two indexers, one with extensive experience indexing academic books and another who specializes in technical indexing, decided to find out. Each indexer followed the indexing conventions in the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, while working on her own on opposite ends of the United States (Cynthia in Oregon, Cheryl in Massachusetts). Neither saw the other's work until it was completed. At that time, they compared their indexes, and the results of that comparison are presented in this talk. For the latest phase of this project, we have added a new component: comparing entries written by an indexer who is new to the craft.

Breakout Session 3: The Glory and the Nothing of a Name
Presenter: Noeline Bridge

The indexing of personal names can be an especially time-consuming and often vexing task. Six problem areas will be identified, with examples drawn from actual indexing assignments, along with possible solutions and the factors that can inform decision making.

Breakout Session 4: Usability of Web Indexes at an Academic Institution
Presenter: Ilana Kingsley

Why do people use—or not use—website indexes? This presentation interprets the results of usability studies and offers strategies that can improve index use. (This presentation is a continuation of research presented at the 2005 ASI conference.)

9:30am–10:00am
Morning Refreshment Break

9:30am–7:00pm
Exhibit Area Open

Morning Breakout Sessions Continue

10:00am–10:45am
Breakout Session 5: Indexing and Bilingual Thesaurus Construction
Presenter: Meral Alakus

Meral will explore the challenges that are unique to designing thesauri in multilingual environments, as well as related challenges in book and journal indexing, database indexing, and Web indexing. She will also explore a special bilingual thesaurus project in both Turkish and English languages on women's studies called the "Women's Thesaurus."

10:00am–11:15am
Breakout Session 6: Organizing Your Office Systems
Presenter: Marilyn Augst

Fine-tune your business by organizing your work procedures and office systems to allow you to work efficiently and to avoid reinventing your work flow with each new project. To help participants find a system that works for them, Marilyn speaks about keeping a calendar, managing project time, tracking various work statistics, recording project specifications, implementing a backup system, managing invoices and estimated tax payments, archiving work after completion, and keeping a bibliography of past projects. Participants are encouraged to share their ideas as well.

10:00am–11:30am
Breakout Session 7: Taking Charge of the Book: Using the WordCo Approach to Avoid Common Pitfalls in Indexing Projects
Presenter: Stephen Ingle

WordCo's methodical approach to indexing can help the indexer feel more confident throughout the course of the indexing project. By providing a simple routine together with a cyclical process of "zeroing-in" on the subject matter and the index, this approach reduces the need for guesswork and decision making on the part of the indexer. The end result is to make the indexing process less formidable and more logical. The presentation is in workshop format with hands-on exercises.

10:00am–12:00noon
Breakout Session 8: Case Studies in HTML Indexing
Presenters: Heather Hedden (moderator), Ian Cooper, Timothy C. Craven, Cheryl Lemmens, David Ream, Pilar Wyman

This moderated panel include five panelists speaking on the following: (a) the creation of a bilingual website index, (b) the creation of an intranet index, (c) the conversion of a book index to an online format, (d) the creation of an online periodical index in CINDEX™ and HTML/Prep, and (e) the use of the web indexing software XRefHT32.

11:00am–12:00noon
Breakout Session 9: International Indexing Panel

Indexers from around the globe will discuss and answer audience questions about the unique challenges of indexing in specific countries and in languages other than English.

11:30am–12:00noon
Breakout Session 10: TBD

12:00noon–1:30pm
Lunch and Awards Presentations

Afternoon Breakout Sessions

1:30pm–2:45pm
Breakout Session 11: In Search of Excellence
Presenter: Maria Coughlin

The panel will discuss how ASI awards professional recognition. Experienced Wilson Award judges will be joined by moderator Maria Coughlin in an exploration not only of how indexers can better prepare indexes for the Wilson Award itself, but also of how ASI can expand its program of professional recognition at national, chapter, and SIG levels. A new indexing award has been proposed. The panel and audience are invited to comment on how this award (and other ideas) could be administered in an effort broaden ASI's recognition of excellence in our profession.

1:30pm–2:45pm
Breakout Session 12: The Process of Building Taxonomies
Presenter: Seth Earley

Taxonomy development involves an emphasis on user tasks and an understanding of various audience perspectives, as well as their contexts and processes. In this session, we'll go through the steps to deriving a taxonomy and explore case examples in taxonomy development.

1:30pm–4:30pm
Breakout Session 13: Parliamentary Indexing
Presenters: Julie McClung, Laura Kotler, Vivien Cartmell, Estelita Chan, Judy Dunlop, Deirdre Grist, Trine Schioldan, David Ream

Indexers will discuss the challenges of indexing the official report of debates (Hansard) of the Legislatures in provincial capitals across Canada. Presenters from participating jurisdictions will discuss the history of Hansard, the content of Hansard indexes, the factors that shape the on-line and print indexes, and the software that facilitates the web publishing of indexes. During the legislative session, indexers read debate transcripts and write a cumulative business, subject, and speaker index, allowing users to search for information by multiple entry points. The ongoing and archival nature of Legislature debate indexes differs substantially from indexes of stand-alone publications. Indexes require a strictly controlled vocabulary and consistent approach to topics arising in the text. Yet as terminology changes over time, they must be responsive to user needs. The source text itself presents many interesting issues for indexers. Despite the structure of routine Legislative Assembly business, debate topics can be far-ranging and highly politicized, yet require non-judgmental language in terms of index entries. Filibusters and late-night debates may generate text with factual errors, malapropisms, redundancies, etc., that the indexer of proofread books would not typically encounter. All of these factors ensure that indexing legislative debates is never dull. A tour of the Ontario Hansard facilities and Legislative Assembly chamber will be included in the workshop.

1:30pm–4:30pm
Breakout Session 14: Designing for Online Findability
Presenter: Fred Brown

In this hands-on workshop, we take a vacation from the high-pressure world of book indexing to explore how indexing principles can assist website and intranet users find information. We explore six proven strategies. The focus is on tools for individual web and intranet sites using such techniques as labeling, hypertext links, web indexing, taxonomies, metadata, and topic maps. We begin by cruising websites in different countries before having some "play time" by designing navigation aids ourselves. Grab your favorite sun hat, slap on the sun screen, and join us for our indexers' expedition on the Net.

3:00pm–3:45pm
Breakout Session 15: Ask an Indexer Panel
Presenter: Pilar Wyman (moderator), Noeline Bridge, Ruth Pincoe

This immensely popular panel presentation has been given since the 2004 annual meeting and conference. It gives attendees the opportunity to ask those questions they've always wanted to ask, on either business or technical aspects of indexing. The panelists have more than 50 years of indexing experience among them.

3:00pm–3:45pm
Breakout Session 16: Indexing Aerospace Books
Presenter: Jon S. Bach

Starting with a brief introduction to the subject matter included in the literature of aerospace, Jon characterizes the discipline as scholarly, multidisciplinary, and contemporary. He then presents examples that illustrate the specific types of challenges one encounters when indexing aerospace books. Finally, Jon provides a few broad but practical guidelines for addressing these challenges.

4:00pm–5:00pm
Breakout Session 17: Stopping to Listen: Ethical Places, Ethical Spaces
Presenter: Christine Jacobs

What is the place of ethics in indexing? There are basic business ethics, of course, but the indexing process itself can involve indexers in dilemmas that go beyond these. For example, is there a commitment to the subject of a text? And if there is, what exactly does this mean? How do you choose which topics to emphasize, which to leave as secondary/tertiary? What do you do when you disagree with the author's instructions? This is a session to stimulate your thinking about how you work and how you interact with your work.

4:00 pm–5:00 pm
Breakout Session 18: Evaluating Technical Indexes: Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Them
Presenter: Dick Evans

Are you an editor who needs to evaluate indexes prepared by others? Are you a writer who has inherited an index and wants to know whether the quality is up to par? If so, this presentation is for you. Dick Evans, freelance indexer, past president of the American Society of Indexers, and senior member of STC presents examples from real-world technical indexes that illustrate common flaws. You won't leave knowing everything there is to know about indexing, but you will be able to review an index and identify common errors without ever having to read the material indexed.

5:30pm–6:30pm
Reception in Exhibit Area

7:30am–2:00pm
Conference Registration

7:30am–8:30am
Continental Breakfast

8:00am–12:00noon
Exhibit Area Open

Plenary Sessions

8:30am–9:15am
Plenary Session 1: The State of Indexing in Continental Europe
Presenter: Caroline Diepeveen

Based on articles that will appear in the October 2006 issue of The Indexer, Caroline will present the current state of affairs regarding indexing in continental Europe. With emphasis on Netherlands and Germany, she will share information she has collected on other countries such as France and Scandinavia and compare these findings with English-language indexing practices.

9:15 am–10:15 am
Plenary Session 2: Presentations from China Society of Indexers (CSI)
Presenters: Xu Zhong and Niu Zhendong

Professor Xu, chairman of the executive council CSI and vice president of Fudan University, will introduce CSI and its development. Professor Niu, vice chairman of the executive council CSI, will introduce the indexing technology used in China.

10:15am–10:30am
Meeting Announcements
Presenters: Seth Maislin, Ruth Pincoe

10:30am–11:15am
Plenary Session 3: Open Credentialing Forum

Members of ASI's Credentialing Committee will moderate this open discussion about the current and future state of ASI's credentialing process. ASI members and non-ASI members alike are encouraged to attend and share their opinions.

11:15am–12:15pm
ASI Business Meeting

12:15pm–1:30pm
Lunch and Conference Closing

1:30 pm–2:15 pm
Post-Plenary Session: A Practical Meeting Planner
Presenter: Jacob Schulzinger

Learn how to strategically, financially, and comprehensively plan a meeting. This proven approach explains how to establish your meeting plan and walks you through the hows, whens, and whys of all key elements. You will also learn how to estimate meeting costs and income, so that you know where you are financially at every step of the way. Samples of the worksheets and related advertising information are provided.

See also Post-Conference Workshops.