East Bay Chapter Monthly Meeting

Thursday, January 9, 2003

There are writers in the United States who work full-time as professional indexers—and they rarely lack for work. Author and professional indexer Nancy Mulvany will address the East Bay chapter of the STC at our January 9 dinner meeting. Nancy owns Bayside Indexing Service, is the author of Indexing Books (University of Chicago Press, 1994), and is Past President of the American Society of Indexers.

At our first meeting of the new year, professional indexer Nancy Mulvany will tell you everything you always wanted to know about indexing – but didn’t know what questions to ask. For example:

1. Do professional indexers come behind a machine-generated index, and then tidy it up? (The answer may surprise you.)
2. What do indexers think of Word, FrameMaker, etc., and their mechanical index tools (This may not surprise you.)
3. Is professional indexing valuable in the Web universe as well as in the dead-trees publishing world?
4. How long should it take to index a 300-page book?
5. How do you break into the field of professional indexing?

If you want to investigate this highly prized field prior to Nancy’s presentation, visit her website at bayside-indexing.com, or the American Society of Indexers at asindexing.org. And plan to join us on Thursday, January 9, 2003, to hear Nancy Mulvany discuss these and other questions regarding the reader’s best friend: a well-prepared index.

About our presenter:
Nancy Mulvany is the owner of Bayside Indexing Service and the author of Indexing Books (University of Chicago Press, 1994). She designed and taught accredited book indexing courses for 15 years through the USDA Graduate School and the University of California Berkeley Extension. She is North American Reviews Editor for the international journal, The Indexer. Currently Mulvany is a Contract Advisor for the National Writers Union (UAW Local 1981). She is a past president of the American Society of Indexers and a recipient of the Hines Award for service to the profession of indexing.