Newsletter of the East Bay Chapter of STC
March/April 2003

Meeting Report: January 2003

by Sherry Weaver Smith
EBSTC Member

Nancy Mulvany

When Nancy Mulvany asked January STC meeting attendees who enjoyed indexing their projects, she wasn’t surprised at the small show of hands. She commented, “I wasn’t born this way. Indexing is an acquired taste— much like malt whiskey.” We all began to acquire a taste for it after Nancy’s humorous presentation regarding indexing tips and career opportunities in the field.

Nancy Mulvany wrote Indexing Books, a key resource for many technical writers. She is the owner of Bayside Indexing, a consulting firm focused on indexing.

How to Create an Effective Index

The overall objective of a good index is to serve as “the interface between reader and author,” according to Nancy. To create an index, you must “understand the author and anticipate the reader.” To achieve this, you must go beyond identifying a few keywords and putting blind faith in the indexing features embedded in software tools such as Framemaker. Here are Nancy’s tips for creating an index beyond keywords.

• Peruse the table of contents first to get a sense of where the material is going
• Identify conceptual relationships in the material by looking for the hierarchy of what is important
• Draw on your sense of language to anticipate how a reader might look something up; indexed items and cross-references might not even exist as language in the text
• Consult the author for clarification if needed
• Use software tools such as Cindex, Macrex, and SKY Index that do the following:
  • Alphabetize correctly
  • Enable you to get a sense of how the index is evolving as a unified whole
  • Format according to multiple specifications (useful for working with more than one publisher)

Career Opportunities

If you learn these skills, the next step is to try to break into the field. Indexers almost always work as contractors, since few organizations have the volume to sustain a staff indexer. Indexers contract with publishing companies or technical companies. Publishing company production editors, the usual point of contact, are usually reluctant to try new indexers. However, if you contact publishing companies, your letter is likely to last longer than those of freelance editors.

Networking is important; try attending a meeting of the American Society of Indexers. Learn indexing skills and meet other interested indexers by taking UC Berkeley Extension’s course on Basic Indexing offered each summer.

Once you get started in the field, it is important to evaluate prospective jobs before signing a contract. Rates can vary from $3–$6+ per page. The average number of pages you can index in an hour also varies, from 6 pages per hour (university press titles) to 50 pages per hour (technical books with a specific audience). When you do the math, you will realize how critical it is to estimate the complexity of the work in advance. Always request a sample to assist in estimating.

Future of Indexing

Indexers’ skill sets will become increasingly important as more and more of us seek better ways of navigating the World Wide Web. Web sites increasingly feature indexes; see the American Society of Indexers for an example. Other applications of indexing are creating taxonomies to power search engines and identifying metatag keywords to help bring targeted visitors to a web site. According to Nancy, it is clear that indexing, both for books and online materials, is a skill that will continue to be in demand.

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