The Indexing Society of Canada / Société canadienne d’indexation (ISC/SCI) is Canada’s national association of indexers.
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Call for Submissions: ISC/SCI Ewart-Daveluy Award for Excellence in Indexing 2022
Indexing Society of Canada
Submissions are open! The application has never been easier.
- It’s all online.
- You don’t need a hard copy — just send a PDF of the published book AND/OR the PDF sent to you by the publisher plus your Word/RTF file of the index.
- The cost is only $30.
- We provide feedback for up to three runners-up.
No restriction on the subject matter or genre — textbooks, cookbooks, guidebooks, memoirs, art books, how-to books, travel books, all books — it’s your index we will be looking at.
Show us how you creatively overcame challenges, resulting in an outstanding, well-structured, easy-to-navigate, clear and comprehensive guide for all of its users.
Give us a challenge. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Maybe you’ll get the prize (which won’t happen if you don’t apply). And if not, you’re very likely to get expert confidential feedback. That’s worth a lot.
This year you can submit indexes published in 2020 and 2021. If you are a Canadian indexer or a Canadian resident, this is the time to do it. If you are not a Canadian citizen or resident, you may submit an index if you were a member of ISC/SCI at the time you wrote the index.
The deadline for submissions is March 15, 2022. Please see the awards page for guidelines, criteria, and the submission form.
2021 Ewart-Daveluy Award: Stephen Ullstrom
Indexing Society of Canada
The ISC/SCI Ewart-Daveluy Award, inaugurated in 2015, is presented each year to an individual who has created an index that demonstrates outstanding expertise through a combination of skills.
The 2021 Ewart-Daveluy Indexing award was presented to Stephen Ullstrom for his indexing of The Shield of Psalmic Prayer: Reflections on Translating, Interpreting, and Praying the Psalter, by Donald Sheehan, published in 2020 by Ancient Faith Publishing.
The Shield of Psalmic Prayer is a collection of essays, study notes, and personal journal entries on interpreting, translating, and praying with the Psalms in light of Orthodox Christian theology. The author, Donald Sheehan, was an English professor and long-time director of the Robert Frost Place in New Hampshire. The collection was gathered and edited posthumously by Donald’s widow, Xenia Sheehan. Because the text originally was not intended for publication, the pieces are often unfinished and unpolished, which gives the book a contemplative and quiet tone. About two-thirds of the chapters focus exclusively on a specific psalm or two. Stephen’s challenge was to understand these fragments and tie them to the broader themes of the book.
Stephen met the challenge of creating an excellent index. As one judge noted, “really nice detail and solid breakdowns under the Psalms.” Said another, “this is a properly done scripture index.” Other comments included “a good solid job on a difficult subject” and a “thorough, thoughtful index.” Finally, “it addresses the main needs of potential users.”
The index is available courtesy of Ancient Faith Publishing.
Stephen Ullstrom is a freelance indexer and writer residing in Edmonton, Alberta. He wrote his first index ten years ago, never imagining that that would lead to a full-time indexing career. In 2014 he won the Purple Pen Award for best new indexer. Stephen indexes in the humanities and social sciences with a special interest in Asian studies, religious studies, history, and biography.
Conference 2022 :: Congrès 2022 – Virtual
Indexing Society of Canada
Dennis Duncan to speak at 2022 Conference
Indexing Society of Canada
Following the success of the 2021 conference, ISC/SCI will again be holding the annual conference online, with dates to be announced soon. And so we are thrilled to announce that the keynote speaker for the 2022 Annual Indexing Conference will be Dennis Duncan, author of the newly released book Index, A History of the.
Charting its curious path from the monasteries and universities of thirteenth-century Europe to Silicon Valley in the twenty-first, Dennis Duncan reveals how the index has saved heretics from the stake, kept politicians from high office and made us all into the readers we are today. We follow it through German print shops and Enlightenment coffee houses, novelists’ living rooms and university laboratories, encountering emperors and popes, philosophers and prime ministers, poets, librarians and – of course – indexers along the way. Revealing its vast role in our evolving literary and intellectual culture, Duncan shows that, for all our anxieties about the Age of Search, we are all index-rakers at heart, and we have been for eight hundred years.
Dennis Duncan is a writer, translator, lecturer in English at University College London, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He has published numerous academic books, including Book Parts and The Oulipo and Modern Thought, as well as translations of Michel Foucault, Boris Vian, and Alfred Jarry. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement, and the London Review of Books, and recent articles have considered Mallarmé and jugs, James Joyce and pornography, and the history of Times New Roman.
2021 Tamarack Award: Siusan Moffat
Indexing Society of Canada
Toronto: The Indexing Society of Canada / Société canadienne d’indexation (ISC/SCI) is pleased to announce the 2021 recipient of the Tamarack Award. Siusan Moffat (Toronto) is being recognized for her contribution and commitment to the society.
Siusan was chosen for her drive to help ISC/SCI be more representative of the diversity present in Canada. Siusan’s colleagues had the following to say about her:
She took the Truth and Reconciliation Commission work to heart, and used her passionate energy to found The Inclusion, Diversity and Equity Committee (TIDE). She has consistently looked for ways to get the word out about indexing to people from marginalized or otherwise underrepresented groups who might be interested.
The TIDE committee is accomplishing something wonderful, and this is thanks in large part to Siusan—from Bulletin articles to webinars to the Diversity in Canadian Publishing Bursary, now seeing its second year. Thank you, Siusan, for your hard work that is affecting real people. And thank you for so positively affecting me, as a colleague, team member, and friend.
She was additionally a hard-working and diligent member of the Executive Committee, and in every instance, I found her to be a kind and compassionate colleague to work with.
“I am thrilled to present this award to Siusan, and we are honoured to have her as a member of our society,” said Alexandra Peace, President. “Thank you, Siusan, for all you have given to the society and its membership.”
The Tamarack Award was instituted to recognize members who go “above and beyond the call of duty” in their volunteer work for the Society.