Upcoming Events
Chicago/Great Lakes Chapter of the American Society for Indexing
Indexing Mars Exploration While It Is Happening
Zoom Meeting: Wednesday, Dec. 7th, 2022 - 7 pm EST; 6 pm CST
The speakers are Jessica Hinds-Bond and Enid L. Zafran.
Jessica, a member of the Chicago Chapter of ASI, won the 2022 Purple Pen Award for New Indexers, an annual competition run by the Institute of Certified Indexers. She will talk about the challenges she faced in writing the index to Discovering Mars published by the University of Arizona Press.
One of the authors, when informed about Jessica's win, wrote, "I can only say that Jessica was not only by far the best indexer I have ever worked with (and far better than I could ever be even with books I myself wrote) but she was the best indexer I could imagine. Throughout the process on this colossal book, her intelligence, care, and diligence were almost beyond my ability to comprehend, and not only did she produce an outstanding index, but she also found many weak points in the text where correction or clarification was needed."
In addition to facing a book outside her knowledge-base, Jessica had to deal with a text that was undergoing rewrites at the same time she was indexing it. Also, the Press had a length limit that required her to exclude valid entries. These are problems that long-time indexers face, so her discussion will be of interest to indexers at all levels of experience. We encourage attendees to describe how they have handled similar issues.
Enid L. Zafran, an indexer with forty years of experience, has served as a judge for the Purple Pen Contest since its inception nine years ago. She will explain the judging process and the most common problems in the work of newer indexers. Enid served as the head of ASI Publications for many years and her name is well-known to both those entering the field from her popular title Starting an Indexing Business and to experienced indexers from the series which she edited, Index It Right! Her indexing business, Indexing Partners, is located in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and she offers an Indexing Boot Camp both in-person and over Zoom.
Registration is open to all ASI and ISC members. Please provide your name and email address to jfuhr@earthlink.net. There is no charge for C/GL members. Fees are $5.00 for other chapter members, $10.00 for non-ASI-members, and are payable here. Registration ends December 5th. Registrants will receive a Zoom link on December 6.
Jim Fuhr
Chairperson
jfuhr@earthlink.net
PAST EVENTS
July 13, 2019
We hosted the first lunch chat of its kind since 2016. It was convivial and well attended. Three of our guests were new members. Our conversations covered many areas of indexing in the comfortable natural lighting of our venue, Hay Caramba restaurant in Park Ridge. We hope to continue these events in upcoming months.
Winter 2019 Workshop: Friday, 2/22 and Saturday, 2/23, 2019
Friday: Genealogy Research: Background, Research Materials, and How It Relates to Indexing Projects (this is follow up from the Fall 2018 Workshop)
Saturday: Building, Marketing & Maintaining Your Business, Disaster Planning; Art Indexing, Plus Editing and Proofreading; Digital Indexing (follow up from the Fall 2018 Workshop)
FALL 2018 WORKSHOP - October 26 & 27, 2018
Our Fall Workshop Friday, October 26 and Saturday, October 27 in Des Plaines, Illinois was a great success. The following was part of our two-day event:
A full day presentation by Enid Zafran on "Indexing Names."
Featured speaker from the Newberry Library in Chicago: Matt Rutherford, Curator of Genealogy and Local History
Presentations by Fred Leise on "Index Structure," by Terry Casey on "Digital Indexing Techniques," and Jim Fuhr on CUP/XML Word Embed.
Thanks to all our great presenters and wonderfully engaged attendees! See you soon.