Jan 2026 Informal Virtual Gathering

Elizabeth Bartmess

Fourteen chapter members came together for an informal virtual gathering led by Program Chair Lisa Sorenson. After brief announcements, we shared a recent event of importance in our lives, then discussed various questions on indexing. 

Announcements

  • Registration is open for the ISC/SCI 2026 conference, April 10–11 with preconference sessions on April 9. Register by Mar 15 for Early Bird Pricing and view the conference program at https://conference.indexers.ca/
  • ASI will have an Online Learning Course in October on embedded indexing. Kevin Broccoli is also planning an embedded indexing course; contact him for details. In the meantime, the DPI SIG has embedded indexing resources.

Indexing discussion

  • Indexing narrative content: we discussed the need to index more lightly than we would for a non-narrative text, and to focus on the main topic, people, and places. 
  • Proofreading: we discussed what happens when we’re being asked to de facto proofread. An indexer reminded us that embedded indexes are often being done as embedded indexes so that proofreading can be done at the same time as indexing and the changes later merged, so she does not proofread those. 
  • There was a brief mention of the use of LaTeX, and someone noted that Sergey Lobachev will be giving a presentation on this at the ISC conference. (He was unintentionally omitted from the conference webpage, but will be added shortly.)
  • Philosophy texts: We discussed price ranges for these since they are much slower to index. 
  • We discussed the importance of software legacy plans and the usefulness of software support. : The importance of these was discussed, and that in lieu of these, there are important resources that are still available, such as the discussion listservs:
  • Our next meeting will be in the spring, and we will solicit topic suggestions ahead of time. We hope to see you then!