2009 Annual Conference

Scaling the Heights
April 23–25, 2009
DoubleTree - Lloyd Center Hotel
Portland, Oregon

Portland News and Notes
October 2008

An occasional report on ASI conference planning
for our Portland meeting, April 23–25, 2009

Green Portland

Portland, OR, has retained its title as the United States’ Most Sustainable City (as named by SustainLane, www.susstainlane.com). Portland has had a green city policy since the 1970s, with strict land-use rules, density requirements, an urban growth boundary, emphasis on mass transportation, support for green buildings, and a commitment to renewable energy. Portland also has an impressive set of lungs—large areas of central urban greenery where locals and visitors can stroll, hike, picnic, and view the many formal and informal gardens. We’ll be there at the end of April, before they really start to bloom, but you should know that one of Portland’s nicknames is “The City of Roses,” due to its significant rose growing industry and rose festival. ASI will arrange a tour of the city’s formal Chinese gardens, but Portland has many other horticultural spots, including the Japanese tea gardens, the International Rose Test Garden, and the Berry Botanic Garden. Cheryl Landes will be producing an ASI visitor’s guide for all conference attendees; in the meantime, you might want to visit www.travelportland.com, which has losts of useful information about our conference town, including self-guided multicultural walking tours.

Knotty Bits Looking for an Owner

I really wanted something that sounded more erudite, but “Knotty Bits” has become the de facto term for the series of short sessions we’ll hold on perennial little indexing problems that all indexers cope with. Whether you’re just beginning to index or you’ve been doing it for years, these issues crop up on a daily basis: How should I alphabetize these entries? What’s the best rule for using acronyms? I’m still looking for a few speakers to take on some of these short topics: specifically:

• Whether and when to index notes
• Expressing negatives
• Indexing fictional and mythological characters

But if you have your own idea of an indexing conundrum you’d like to discuss, I’m open to hearing about any and everything. If you’re interested in presenting at the conference but are a little timid about dipping your toe into the waters, “Knotty Bits” are a good way to start—they’re short, informal, and don’t require huge amounts of preparation (presenters will generally speak for 15–20 minutes, discussing the issues and some solutions, and then throw the floor open to the audience for guided discussion; some may wish to incorporate a brief hands-on exercise). Contact me at kmertes@hotmail.com to discuss presenting a “knotty bit.”

Hot Topics

More and more of us are receiving our work in .pdf format, and we’re finding out that doing so can not only save paper, time, and shipping costs; it can improve our indexing. Cheryl Landes will present a conference session on working with .pdfs from an indexing point of view, and Dave Ream will also lead a seminar on .pdfs from a programmer’s perspective.

We also have several sessions planned on taxonomies, still a relatively new field of information retrieval work into which more and more indexers are taking the plunge. Alice Redmond-Neal of Access Innovations, Inc. will present a full-day workshop of “Building Taxonomies from the Ground Up,” and she’ll also present a case study of “Morphing Many Book Indexes into One Taxonomy.” Jenny Benevento will talk about “Taxonomies to Internet 2.0.”

New Instructor for Beginning Indexing Workshop

Kay Schlembach, after many years of sterling service, is taking a rest from running our very popular beginning indexing workshop. Seth Maislin will fill her shoes with a full-day session on the foundational principles of indexing. Seth is an adjunct instructor at three Massachusetts colleges, has run instructional courses for many private companies, and has his own online course on indexing books and Websites. If you know of any newbies who want to get a taste of indexing basics, or if you just want a refresher course yourself, be sure to come to Portland!

The Naked Indexer

Ever want to see an indexer naked—an unadorned view of their actual working methods, of course! Fred Leise will let you have a peek, in a half-day session in which he will talk you through how he handles a text from the ground up. Using material he’s never seen before, he’ll take you through his process, step by step. Experienced indexers will really enjoy seeing how another pro looks at a project, and newbies will get a good sense of just what it is professional indexers actually do. It promises to be a fascinating experience, and a great way for ASI to retain institutional memory about the working methods of our best indexers.

To provide information or make a suggestion, send email to webmaster@asindexing.org
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