President's Message

Life has a way of changing just when you think it's under control. That was the case this spring when Jennifer Hedges, my co-president, needed to step down for health reasons.

That's when you discover that the strength of our organization lies with our volunteers. Emails from executive members arrived with the message, “Tell me where I can help.” This reinforces my feeling that ISC/SCI is not a top-down, one-person-run organization; we work as a team and we help each other when there are things to take care of—not the least of which was the joint conference in Chicago, hosted by ASI.

At this year's conference, Mary Newberry was awarded both the Ewart-Daveluy Award for indexing and the Tamarack Award for her volunteer work for the Society. Congratulations again, Mary! This was also a year in which we were able to offer conference scholarships to four lucky winners: Anna Olivier, Anne Godlewski, Vanessa Wells, and Marnie Lamb.

While we were a small group at the conference this year (thanks in large part to the exchange rate), we were an active group, leading some sessions and getting to know our American and international colleagues. Many of us are reporting in this issue on what we learned at the sessions. Conferences are a wonderful opportunity to hone your indexing skills by way of the sessions and also, importantly, to nurture and develop the relationships between fellow indexers, both professionally and socially.

The executive is thrilled to announce that next year's conference will be held in Montréal. While the exact dates have not been set yet, we are aiming to hold it sometime around the beginning of June 2017. The initial planning has already begun, and when we have a confirmed venue and firm dates, we'll let you know. Your job for now: keep your calendar clear for Montréal and stay tuned!

I hope your summer offers a good balance between relaxation and indexing productivity.

Margaret de Boer

From left: John Barkwell, Anne Godlewski, Barbara Cuerdon, Mary Newberry, Martine Rocheleau, Margaret de Boer, Marnie Lamb, Anna Olivier, Heather Ebbs, Alexandrea Peace, François Trahan, Stephen Ullstrom, JoAnne Burek, and Siusan Moffat. (Photo credit Gwen Hensen.)

Rapport de la prèsidente

La vie a le don de changer, juste au moment où on se dit qu'on a finalement la situation en main. Ceci était le cas au printemps dernier, lorsque Jennifer Hedges, ma co-présidente, a été obligée de démissionner pour des raisons de santé.

C'est à cette occasion que j'ai découvert que la santé de notre organisation dépendait en très grande partie du travail de nos bénévoles. Nombreux étaient les courriels de membres de notre bureau de direction qui m'écrivaient pour m'offrir leur aide. Ceci confirme cependant ce que je savais déjà : la SCI/ISC n'est pas une organisation dirigée par une seule personne et où prime la hiérarchie; nous travaillons en équipe et nous nous entraidons quand il y a beaucoup de travail – un bon exemple, et non le moindre, est le congrès conjoint de Chicago, qui avait été organisé en collaboration avec l'ASI.

Lors de ce congrès, Mary Newberry a reçu le prix Ewart-Daveluy en indexation et le prix Tamarack pour son travail de bénévole pour la Société. Encore une fois, nos plus sincères félicitations, Mary! Nous avons également été en mesure, cette année, d'offrir, à quatre heureuses élues, une aide financière pour qu'elles puissent se rendre au congrès : Anna Olivier, Anne Godlewski, Vanessa Wells et Marnie Lamb.

Bien que nous n'ayons été qu'un petit groupe à représenter la SCI/ISC à ce congrès (« grâce », en grande partie, à un taux de change très peu favorable), nous y avons activement participé et avons animé certaines sessions, tout en faisant la connaissance de nos confrères américains et du reste du monde. Nous sommes nombreux à partager ce que nous avons appris lors du congrès dans ce numéro. Ces congrès sont essentiels pour améliorer nos compétences en indexation, mais aussi pour entretenir et développer des relations avec nos collègues, tant sur le plan social que professionnel.

Le bureau de direction est heureux d'annoncer que le congrès de l'année prochaine se tiendra à Montréal. Bien que les dates exactes n'aient pas encore été déterminées, nous prévoyons qu'il aura lieu au début du mois de juin 2017. Nous en sommes pour l'instant au stade de la planification initiale et nous vous communiquerons le lieu et les dates du congrès une fois que ceci aura été déterminé. La seule chose que vous ayez à faire pour l'instant est de réserver cette période de l'année pour vous rendre à Montréal et de rester à l'écoute!

Je vous souhaite un très bon été, rempli de longs moments de détente, mais aussi de travail d'indexation productif.

Margaret de Boer

Editor, Comments from . . .

Wow, what a fantastic issue! When I reviewed the articles, conference session summaries, and executive reports that have been submitted over the past month, I was amazed at the effort that the contributors have put into this issue. With a low ISC/SCI attendance at this year's conference (last count was 17 members), those who went quickly stepped up to report on sessions for the rest of the membership. What a great bunch of people!

Mary Newberry's name seemed to pop up everywhere in the submissions and she is the real star of this issue—winning both the ISC/SCI's Tamarack Award and the 2016 Ewart-Daveluy Award, presenting twice at the conference (both times on oral history projects), and serving on the executive. Mary is interviewed by Marnie Lamb on her Ewart-Daveluy Award–winning index, and along the way she shares some insights into her indexing process. Congratulations on so many levels!

I can't imagine the enormity of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report—six volumes, six indexers, heartbreaking and deeply disturbing subject matter, and an unwavering commitment to make sure the truth can be found. I encourage everyone to visit the volumes and their indexes and give thought to the subject matter.

I am very happy to have one French-language session summary from the conference. Aptly it is on the bilingual TRC indexing project presentation, so we have two takes on it. It would be wonderful to have more in the Bulletin to offer to our francophone members, so ramassez vos stylos et commencez à écrire!

There are two book reviews to help you decide on summer reading. Henry Wheatley's What Is an Index? is an older text that, according to Boyd Holmes, has much that is still relevant today. Janet Perlman's Indexing Tactics & Tidbits is a new release that, according to Stephen Ullstrom, has something to offer both the beginning and the experienced indexer.

I would like to thank everyone who worked so hard to contribute to this issue. The deadline was tight (it had to be—warm weather was coming fast) and people were busy, but time was made and the result speaks for itself.

As always, I welcome submissions for future editions of the Bulletin. If you have an idea for an article, have read something interesting, disagree with something, or just have some thoughts you would like to share, feel free to contact me at andrea@wordtapestries.com.

Andrea Hatley

2016 Conference Session Summaries

Plenary Session Keynote

Larry D. Sweazy

You can double-post Larry as both indexer and novelist.¹ His talk gave us insight into the route he took into writing and how it connects to his varied indexing career. His upbringing involved a mixture of orderliness, crosswords and dictionaries, and some family chaos, but his training to put everything in its place prevailed; he honed his skills of tenacity, observation, and empathy. These, along with the influence of the women in his life, enabled him to create the credible and endearing character Marjorie Trumaine, indexer and sleuth of See Also Murder and See Also Deception, the first two murder mysteries of the eponymous series.

Like many of us, Larry's work life was varied and didn't always involve writing. Being around editors and in the hands of an agent led to some frustrating and disheartening experiences, but the door-closing/window-opening opportunities eventually led to having his short stories published in several anthologies and his novels in series of discrete genres. The series perhaps best known to us indexer/editor types is the Marjorie Trumaine books. They have enabled him to showcase our little-known or understood line of work while exercising his sleuth-writing chops and his ability to write in a woman's voice, in another era, and in a challengingly bleak environment. And the many years of his double career have created books that appeal to those beyond the indexing community as well.

After Larry shared some of his work and life experiences with us, he took questions from the audience, which are summarized here. He feels that indexers are a result partly of genetics and partly of experience. However, he has always been a writer and may have blushed when reporting that he started with some bad love poems as a kid. He gravitated to mysteries perhaps because of the inherent need to create order out of chaos, and because ultimately the bad guy always gets what he deserves.

Larry's writing tends to progress organically, flowing without structured outlines, so the ending is not known even to him. Hence the Twitter hashtags I created from his comments about his being a #pantser (unlike some of us #plotters!). However, he is extremely ordered and deliberate when creating notes and charts about setting and character details and—as we who are also editors know—thus avoids story discrepancies that can thwart writing success.

His indexing does inform and complement his writing in terms of the need for keen organizational skills. Larry does keep a strict schedule for both kinds of work, allowing him to meet indexing deadlines and to produce focused writing regularly. To this end he writes creatively first thing in the morning—when he is closest to the dream world of the subconscious—and after a nap writes indexes for the rest of the day.

The other comments he made about the writing process involved his choices of point of view (POV), background, and setting, the things that make the Marjorie Trumaine books stand out. While he acknowledged that access to strong women in his life was helpful for writing a female first-person narrative, he discussed the need for a human POV as key. Fiction writers need to have empathy for other people and, moreover, need to be vulnerable in their development of character and take that character out into the world. In his humility and self-awareness, Larry feels that writing as Marjorie has made him a more rounded writer and person, and thus closer to his wife, Rose.

Setting the murder mysteries in the 1960s Cold War-tempered rural Midwest allows him to explore the era of indexing with index cards and typewriters and the low-tech life during a time when the world was on the brink of swift changes, socially, religiously, and economically. Finally, while the fictional and real-life uses of librarian consulting are appealing for research, historical fiction allows for creativity and straying from the strict facts—but only if it is done using credible and engaging details.

Larry's passion for writing and for indexing are evident. He established the tone of the 2016 conference with a sense of what we all know are requisite for our work: dedication to detail, perseverance, and a love of learning through reading.

Vanessa Wells²

Notes

¹ Thanks to Margie Towery for this description.

² Vanessa Wells is an editor, proofreader, and indexer in Toronto. In July she will be writing a book review of See Also Deception for the EAC Toronto Branch's blog Boldface and a report of her interview with the author for her arts-review blog, Beautiful Feet. She is grateful to Larry for his time and support in facilitating all three of these pieces.

Conference Session Summaries

An Introduction to Taxonomies and Thesauri

Heather Hedden

I decided to attend Heather Hedden's session on taxonomies and thesauri at the ASI/ISC conference in Chicago because I know nothing about them. I'd get that deer-in-the-headlights look if you'd asked me about taxonomies and thesauri, so I was hoping that this session would demystify these two terms for me. I was not disappointed.

Taxonomies, it turns out, are top-down hierarchical lists of terms primarily used for classification and to facilitate browsing by the end-user. You typically start with a broad term for the main h, such as “sports and recreation,” and then move to more narrowly defined terms, such as “team sports” and then “cricket,” for example, as you move down the hierarchy. Another example of a taxonomy that you might encounter is the browsing function on Amazon, where you start with a large category such as books, and that leads to more and narrower options.

Thesauri, while also being concerned with the relationships between terms, have a different purpose and structure. Thesauri are term-centred, so instead of searching through a hierarchical list, you seek the term you want, which then tells you the relationship of that term to other terms. Relationships include hierarchical relationships (broader and narrower terms) and also related terms and preferred and non-preferred terms. Thesauri are often used in periodical indexing and by subject-matter experts who are searching for the best term for a specific context. Unlike taxonomies, thesauri tend to be large and evolving and work well for terms that are difficult to classify. The terms are also highly specific, unlike the more general categorizations in taxonomies.

Forming the basis of both taxonomies and thesauri is the controlled vocabulary, which is simply an authoritative restricted list of acceptable terms. By controlling which words get added and which are preferred and non-preferred terms, one can make sure that all users of the taxonomy and thesaurus will be using the same terms in the same way. This is important for large indexing projects involving multiple indexers, for example.

Heather also briefly touched on term and pick lists, synonym rings, and authority files, which are simpler forms of controlled vocabulary than taxonomies and thesauri, and ontologies, which are a more complex form. These controlled vocabularies all serve to disambiguate terms and to lead users to more specific or preferred terms, but in somewhat different ways and to varying degrees of granularity. The bulk of the session, however, was on taxonomies and thesauri, which, as I understand, are most applicable to indexers (especially thesauri) and to the general public (especially taxonomies).

Heather has also written a book on this subject, The Accidental Taxonomist.¹ Judging from the table of contents and index, it appears to be more about taxonomies than thesauri but is still a very detailed and worthwhile book if you want to learn more. Heather also maintains a regularly updated blog at http://accidental-taxonomist.blogspot.ca. Her three-part webinar series on the ASI website, “Practical Taxonomy Creation,” is also aimed at the beginning taxonomist.

Stephen Ullstrom

Note

¹ Heather Hedden, The Accidental Taxonomist, 2nd ed. (Information Today, 2016).

Conference Session Summaries

Engage and Work It! Marketing and Collaborating Strategies for Indexers

Paul Sweum and Lisa DeBoer

There was no shortage of participants in this marketing and collaboration workshop organized by Paul Sweum and Lisa DeBoer. Paul led the session by outlining the various marketing techniques he uses in his indexing and consulting business. He emphasized the importance of branding, clear articulation of the business mission and vision, and subject knowledge that sets an indexer apart from competitors.

A marketing plan must be carefully prepared and implemented for every business venue. Marketing efforts need to be part of the daily routine, although many indexers concentrate on work and pay attention to marketing only when they have a gap between projects. The selection of marketing tools is very broad and may include business cards, customized postcards, thank-you cards, flyers, brochures, and a résumé.

Knitting indexers. (Photo courtesy of Alexandra Peace.)

A substantial part of the presentation was devoted to the importance of having an online presence. Paul discussed the best practices for promoting your business with a website, social media, blogs, online articles, and emails. There are a number of social networking tools that help to build connections, starting with the old classic listserv discussion groups and moving on to LinkedIn and Facebook.

The most important message of the presentation was that marketing strategies should build relationships with potential clients. Indexers must position themselves as valuable service providers, with conversations between indexers and publishers focusing on value for the latter. If possible, engagement with clients should be brought to the personal level, since most personal relationships result in new contracts and business projects.

Paul's presentation engaged the audience in a lively discussion. Many participants shared their experiences with marketing and collaboration strategies. Kate Mertes suggested always responding to client emails as soon as possible, as late responses might seriously damage relationships. Kate also shared her experience with using Evernote, which she considers an excellent tool, as a customer-relations management system. Paul advocated using Microsoft OneNote for the same purpose. The discussion revealed that both systems have similar capabilities; the choice of one or the other is a matter of personal preference.¹

The second part of the workshop was a networking exercise organized by Lisa. The participants, divided into pairs, were given five minutes to introduce themselves to each other. Then we had to find another partner for conversation. Although most people in the room tended to ignore the five-minute rule, everyone seemed to have a great time.

The presentation and the workshop were interesting and informative, and I believe everyone enjoyed the session. I learned a few tweaks that will help me to improve relationships with my clients and also made connections with fellow indexers that one day may materialize into new indexing projects.

Sergey Lobachev

¹ See the this Lifehacker article for a recent comparison, http://lifehacker.com/note-taking-showdown-evernote-vs-onenote-2016-editio-1765707423.

Conference Session Summaries

Genesis of a Moonlighting Indexer

Meg Daniel

all areas of your life. My take on it: it's clear that you need to be organized, but as with all things in life you need to make sure you have a good work/life balance. What works for Meg might not work for others. You're the best judge of whether you can index, be employed elsewhere, and have enough personal time. It's advice to heed whether you're an indexer or not.

Margaret de Boer

Conference Session Summaries

Enter the Matrix: E-book Indexing

Matrix Group International

Finally, a comprehensive package of information about the state of embedded indexing! Jan Wright, Glenda Browne, David K. Ream, Pilar Wyman, and Michael Combs (who couldn't attend in person) put together a presentation that answered a lot of questions many of us had about what's going on with e-books and indexing.

The session was very full and very lively. There was a lot of back-and-forth between the panel and the participants. E-book indexing can seem confusing, convoluted, and mysterious. This came out in questions between participants and panellists and also between the panellists themselves.

EPUB 3 allows amazing new features to be added to e-book indexes:

- Improved navigation allows groups to be expanded or collapsed and provides easier access to a group by jumping directly to the letter.

- Index filtering can restrict the view to only figures or only tables.

- Interactive generic cross-references use term categories to gather relevant terms.

- Range highlighting identifies where a topic is covered in the body of the book.

However, not only do publishers need to provide code for the new features to work, the e-readers need to be able to read this code. But as neither publishers nor e-reader manufacturers want to take the first step of this financial investment, it means this amazing new interactivity won't be available until there is a big push—from customers and indexers, no doubt—to make it happen.

The “scenarios” part of the discussion was very helpful. In one, Jan played the part of a clueless author who comes to you about wanting an E-book index: “I'm self-publishing my book, and it's going to be the greatest thing ever! I'm going to do both print and E-book versions, of course. Can you get me an index for it? I have no idea how to do that, or what I'm doing, really.” What questions should you ask such authors? Will you be able to give them what they want?

I found this panel to be the best of the weekend and worth my investment in the whole conference. Recent articles had had me thinking that I wouldn't actively pursue e-book indexing and embedding, but this session turned me right around.

Siusan Moffat

Conference Session Summaries

The Truth and Reconciliation Project: Ethical Implications of an Indexing Presentation

Louise St. André, Mary Newberry, Margaret de Boer, Anna Olivier, Alexandra Peace, and François Trahan

At the Chicago conference I was one of the presenters for “Case Study of a Bilingual, Multi-volume Team-Based Indexing Project,” led by Louise St. André, with Margaret de Boer, Anna Olivier, Alexandra Peace, and François Trahan and myself. We produced the index for the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC)—a comprehensive six-volume bilingual record of the Indian residential school system, including recommendations to the government concerning the system and its legacy. It was a massive project that for us (if you count the work of the whole team) extended from July/August 2015 to May/June 2016. In the end, we all took this report into our hearts.

After the presentation, Heather Ebbs, who is interested in the ethics of indexing, shared an insight that we hadn't thought about, at least not in the terms she presented to us. She wondered if the act of working on something momentous, such as this report, included a responsibility to share the knowledge. Sometimes it may not be enough to have made the information accessible through writing the index; it may also be necessary to actively disseminate the information, in a way that is related to the responsibility of a witness to a crime.

We certainly all felt the weight of the responsibility she was talking about, to share what we learned from this report. And each of us, in individual ways, has taken on the task of spreading the word. In some ways this responsibility to share what we read was made more urgent because the indexes we produced were not published at the back of the book but rather as separate online PDFs. We were told this was because the time allowed for production was too short, and if there were ever a second edition, the indexes would be added then. Will these indexes be found?

In our presentation we had much to say about our indexing process. For example, the collaboration we formed was something we did on our own, originally without the knowledge, let alone the encouragement, of our publisher's contact. Our team of six indexers—three English and three French—was located across the country, working at different times and out of order on the various volumes. We met via Skype and phone, doing our best to figure out what would be useful to standardize and what should be left as idiosyncratic to each volume.

In preparation for this presentation, we asked Ryan Van Huijstee, McGill-Queen's University Press's managing editor, if there was anything he would like to say about the index. He noted his initial nervousness when he heard that the indexers were collaborating—basically working around the production editor. But in the end he expressed his gratitude for our work: “To put it simply, I look at the indexes and see great minds at work on a great work. I'm grateful to everyone who was involved with the project and particularly to the thorough and thoughtful indexers who worked so hard and so quickly to help this report's information reach as many people as possible.”

In our presentation we also talked about what we each learned from the report and showed slides of some of the photographs from the report of the children and the schools.

For my part, here are two of the most important things I learned from working on this report: I learned how hard and how long the indigenous people of Canada—the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis—fought first to keep their children from being taken away and then to get them back, and the huge price the various communities and individuals have paid for this battle. I also learned in a very detailed way what it means when we say that all of us as Canadians are responsible.

I urge you all to read some part of the report from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The volumes are all freely available online. They and their indexes can be found here: http://nctr.ca/reports.php.

Mary Newberry

Mary Newberry, Alexandra Peace, Margaret de Boer, Anna Olivier, Louise St. André, and François Trahan. (Photo credit Alexandra Peace.)

Résumés des séances de la Congrès

Projet d'indexation du rapport final de la Commission de vérité et réconciliation du Canada ou comment prêter une voix aux victimes et survivants des pensionnats autochtones

Louise St-André, Margaret de Boer, Anna Olivier, Alexandra Peace et François Trahan

Rares sont les occasions où j'ai été autant émue par un projet d'indexation. J'ai souvent ressenti de la gratitude ou de l'étonnement en prenant connaissance de nouvelles idées ou de la satisfaction en constatant que mon travail quotidien s'aligne avec les principes utilisés par la communauté d'indexation. Toutefois, la présentation du projet d'indexation du rapport final de la Commission de vérité et réconciliation par Louise St-André, Margaret de Boer, Anna Olivier, Alexandra Peace et François Trahan m'a apporté bien plus que ces éléments éducatifs.

Cette présentation est allée bien au-delà de l'explication du processus d'indexation, des règles à établir et des défis à surmonter; elle a rendu l'expérience foncièrement humaine.

Bien que ce soit la première fois que l'équipe de six indexeurs se rassemblait en personne, l'auditoire d'une vingtaine de participants a tout de suite ressenti un esprit d'équipe fort et dynamique.

Après une brève introduction et un sommaire du contexte historique de la Commission, les conférenciers ont donné un aperçu du processus d'embauche par McGill-Queen's University Press. Chaque indexeur a été engagé indépendamment l'un de l'autre et a commencé à travailler individuellement sur sa partie du projet. Ce n'est que plus tard, ayant constaté l'interdépendance des composantes, qu'ils ont consciemment pris la décision de travailler collégialement. Ils ont également décrit les contraintes rencontrées du fait de l'éloignement physique des indexeurs et les défis du projet tels que l'échéancier très serré. Leurs premières rencontres virtuelles (par Skype ou courriel) se sont faites de façon informelle. Tout au long du projet, ils ont su développer un système uniforme, collectif et efficace. Ils ont d'abord indexé les volumes anglais. Ensuite, lorsque les traductions françaises commençaient à arriver, les indexeurs français ont décidé de créer l'index à partir du contenu français plutôt que de traduire les index anglais. De cette façon, ils pouvaient réduire la déconnexion avec le contenu original.

La présentation a aussi abordé les différentes conventions et règles discutées et négociées au sein du groupe. Le fait que les membres partageaient une culture d'indexation similaire et faisaient tous partie de la même société a facilité les discussions. Ils ont convenu rapidement de construire un index convivial, exhaustif et riche d'éléments clés puisque les utilisateurs n'allaient pas être nécessairement tous des chercheurs expérimentés.

Les indexeurs ont été unanimes durant la présentation : le matériel a été difficile à lire et à absorber. Le contexte historique, éthique, social et culturel ne pouvait faire autrement que les émouvoir. Ils ont également tous louangé le travail de collaboration, le soutien et l'entraide de l'équipe et de leurs proches.

À la fin de la session, on nous a rappelé la citation africaine : « ça prend un village pour éduquer un enfant », puis, d'un trait, la présentatrice a ajouté : « ça prend un village pour abuser un enfant ». Il ne reste qu'à espérer que sa conclusion : « ça prend une nation entière pour prendre en main la réconciliation » devienne réalité pour les communautés autochtones touchées par ce génocide culturel.

Chaque indexeur était au départ investi d'une mission ultime : donner une voix à chaque victime, consigner les éléments essentiels dans chacun des volumes pour rendre le contenu le plus accessible possible. Maintenant, ils désirent transmettre leur expérience au plus grand nombre de personnes pour faire eux-mêmes partie du processus de sensibilisation et de réconciliation.

Dans la courte période de question qui a suivi, un extrait de la lettre de félicitations de l'éditeur a été relu. Les commentaires éloquents de celui-ci témoignent d'un travail colossal et exceptionnel. Tout l'auditoire n'a pu faire autrement que ressentir la charge émotive de ce projet. Bravo à toute l'équipe!

Par : Martine Rocheleau, Chambre des communes, Ottawa

Révision : Nicole Blais, Chambre des communes, Ottawa

Informations supplémentaires :

Le rapport final en 6 volumes a été publié le 15 décembre 2015.
Pour en apprendre davantage sur la Commission de vérité et de réconciliation : www-trc-ca
Rapports, index et autres documents : : /nctr.ca/fr/reports.php

Mary Newberry, Alexandra Peace, Margaret de Boer, Anna Olivier, Louise St. André, et François Trahan. (Photo gracieuseté de Alexandra Peace.)

Conference Session Summaries

A Distributed Modular Workflow for Indexing Textbooks

David K. Ream

David K. Ream had the unenviable task of leading this seminar solo, as his copresenter, David Leistensnider, was suddenly taken ill, but he succeeded in conveying methods for managing recombinant indexes for textbooks to a well-attended session of the conference. As a former teacher, I was interested in learning more about the development of textbooks in an economy that does not support learning resources' being produced or updated with much frequency or affordability.

A substantial part of the presentation was devoted to the importance of having an online presence. Paul discussed the best practices for promoting your business with a website, social media, blogs, online articles, and emails. There are a number of social networking tools that help to build connections, starting with the old classic listserv discussion groups and moving on to LinkedIn and Facebook.

Pearson Education has various models for satisfying (American) government educational expectations. These models are based on variables of state “adoption” modules with fixed-order curricula, such as in larger states like Texas; medium ones that must mix and match content with less state-specific content; and still smaller states that use national textbooks that are more generic.

Because of restrictions on textbook production, indexes must be customizable for quick and cheap changes. Pearson and Leverage Technologies produced a workflow model that was applied to more than 27 textbooks, often in the middle-grade science or general curriculum and of about 200 pages in length. Book maps provided a directory of every page of a text so that the module could be entered and then “mixed and matched.” New material could easily be added and the “new” book could be re-indexed from scratch, reusing portions from previous editions so that content would remain consistent. The goals of the enhanced workflow were to reduce indexing time, reuse extant indexes, and auto-generate cross-references.

Master indexes of national files had to be merged with traditional ones, including a master cross-reference file and term remediation via review/edit by the indexer (for example, current could apply to rivers or electricity). While CINDEX was good for recurring h structures, for instance in a series, there were new design issues to contend with: there was a need for algorithms to calculate page numbers and to deal with Roman numerals. Book map information included sources, file names, folios, and relative page numbers.

I admit things became a little Greek to me when the discussion turned to programming talk about script and XML (I think) and script logic. However, I did learn about the use of off-the-shelf software such as CINDEX and the development of custom programs. The seminar addressed standalone indexing, embedded indexing, and distributed indexing around the content management system. Glossaries were also touched on, as structurally they function like an index, so a similar process was implemented to handle them.

Ultimately, this workflow process was a huge time-saver for indexers, who might previously have spent three weeks on a textbook. Now they were able to create new indexes in three to four days so that production cycles could be more efficient and less expensive. Because of fluctuations in government standards for textbook content, this system may be reintroduced and expanded. It was not clear whether this or similar workflows are in place in Canadian textbook publishing, although it may well benefit our market, given the requirements of a fraction of the student population.

Vanessa Wells

Conference Session Summaries

Plenary Session: The Future of Publishing

Dominique Raccah

A change in the conference schedule saw Dominique Raccah, CEO and founder of Sourcebooks, present a keynote on the future of publishing. She gave an interesting profile of her publishing company and how it has weathered the transformation to mixed media publishing. She specifically noted recent changes with failures and successes of e-books and traditional hard copy, and how they are marketed online versus bricks-and-mortar stores. Innovation, and how Sourcebooks accomplished it, was key. Some examples include direct-to-consumer marketing, personalized “put me in the story” stories, and selling parts of books. One lesson learned: focus on customer service—the reader is the customer.

It was overall an interesting presentation about Dominique's publishing company, but the reader/customer doesn't typically give input to indexers. Only in the closing moments during the Q&A—when someone asked, “What does this mean to indexers?”—did the session become relevant for an indexer. Some discussions were begun on how indexers could be part of this process; discoverability, SEO, and the Book Indexing Study Group (BISG) were mentioned. Unfortunately, just as the discussion was becoming interesting, it needed to end. It had already gone overtime.

Margaret de Boer

Conference Session Summaries

Publisher's Roundtable: Customers Lead You to What You Do

John Magee, Ted Trautmann, and Chuck Knapp

Technology is rocking the publishing world in surprising ways. At this session we listened to publishers from the education, legal research, and business content/research sectors as they discussed how online technology has changed not only their approach but their idea of who is the customer.

The panel consisted of John Magee (JM), Director of Indexing and Vocabulary Services, Cengage Learning, (provider of educational content, technology, and services); Ted Trautmann (TT), Editor-in-Chief, Wolters Kluwer Legal and Regulatory, (provider of primary and curated content and research and compliance tools); and Chuck Knapp (CK), Director of Taxonomy and Indexing, Bloomberg BNA, (provider of news content and reference products for business and professionals).

What Users Expect Now

Cengage sees technology as driving a change in student behaviour. Students say they are not getting value from textbooks when they can do more and more online, and their reading devices have been improving vastly. Wolter Kluwers is de-emphasizing print-centric traditional indexes and moving to improved online search. “Users want to type their query and move on.” Most users of Bloomberg BNA's products “don't want to see everything.” They want customization, such as custom email alerts. People want their news delivered based on the topics they pick.

Heather Ebbs and Margaret de Boer.
(Photo courtesy of Alexandra Peace.)

New Approaches

Cengage provides subscriptions to online products. It also puts books online so that customers can access and search them as an online product. Then, to supplement keyword search, they make the back-of-the-book index linkable and display the index terms at the bottom of the record, enabling users to move around from there. Furthermore, books are double-indexed: an index that includes taxonomy terms lets the users discover information the same way as they do with digital books.

Wolter Kluwers is now 50% digital and looking for more ways to bring information to the surface. In the company's first foray online, it was just a different version of print, keeping things similar to what customers were used to. Then WK learned the importance of the user experience, for instance, in developing its latest platform, it used personas. These personas are based not on roles but on how different people approach research.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg BNA is more than 80% digital. Taxonomy is driving who gets what news when.

Cengage uses mechanization for items that have low research value and require fast turnaround, such as periodicals and digital archives. With tens of millions of items, it's not practical to use people; tools get the job done quickly. Wolter Kluwers experimented with statistics-based tools and got mixed results; rules-based tools are working better. WK editors help write the rules and test and refine them. Bloomberg BNA is also using rules-based mechanization as it adds more and more content.

The panel members were unanimous on the limitations of e-books for their markets. JM mentioned that smaller standalone, reference, and how-to books can work as e-books, but when Cengage put out an e-book, it was no better than a printed one. And e-books have no place in the research workflow of attorneys. The Wolter Kluwers librarians hated them because they offered no visibility of usage and don't allow for cross-publication searching.

JM described a Cengage app called Access My Library. If there is a library near you, you can access a Cengage reference product. The app provides both speed of answer (which Google can offer) and authority (which Google cannot).

The New Market Is Users

Cengage used to view librarians, not readers, as its market. But once the subscription renewals became a performance measure, the company turned its focus to the features and functionality that end-users wanted. An online usability study was done years ago, and JM feels it is time for another one. As resources are limited, he needs to build a case that shows the positive financial impact.

Wolter Kluwers once regarded law librarians as the customer, but this has changed. TT said young people are using Google to search (which senior partners find depressing) but they need to get their bearings. They don't know where to look and they don't have the patience to spend time digging around. “So it's up to us to learn what they need and to tune our algorithm to accommodate different kinds of searches and behaviours.”

Bloomberg BNA has started paying attention to law students. Indexing is still important, though. Users are saying, “We are not ready to use the taxonomy yet, but give us all the non-preferred terms so we can enrich the search.” CK described the great relationship they have with their sales reps, who are on the front line with the customers. As the reps demo the product, they obtain valuable feedback, which is used to make improvements.

The panel agreed on the importance of a lean, agile mentality. “You are not going to get it perfect. And once you show [the users] what they are getting, their expectations will change. They need to see something to react to. So fail fast on a small scale.”

Jobs for Indexers

Cengage has a stable pool of contractors for back-of-the-book indexes. It uses the ASI's Indexer Finder and looks for people with specialties, such as calculus or fluency in Arabic or Chinese. When the company gave indexing tests, what worked best was talking with the indexers about why they chose their answers.

Wolter Kluwers editors are subject-matter experts, many with law degrees. The company maintains traditional indexes with a pool of indexers, but increasingly it outsources. Higher-end products go to expert indexers. The company experimented with index-creation software and got rather embarrassing results—“You must have a human review the work of a machine.”

In indexing tests, the prospect must balance granularity with ease of navigation. If the content is complex and important, it is better to go deep at the expense of navigation.

At Bloomberg BNA the indexers are mostly in-house. Bloomberg looks for attorneys who are good at indexing (not easy to find) and detail-oriented people who enjoy the process. On the indexing tests, careful attention is paid to how the candidate solves a problem.

In summary, Cengage, the education provider, has reached a higher state of maturity with the new technology, while the other two firms, which focus on research and content delivery, are still finding their way but are perhaps not far behind. All the companies have one major goal for their business—to deliver a superb end-user experience.

JoAnne Burek

Conference Session Summaries

Town Hall on the Expansion of Indexing

Paul Sweum, Host

Paul Sweum hosted this open forum about the future of indexing, which included newbie, veteran, in-house, and freelance indexers, some with advanced degrees in library sciences and in such disparate fields as optometry and Latin. The group was anxious to explore potential opportunities when the market for indexing often seems to be dwindling.

Paul outlined various elements of successful index business building, including a robust online presence and ongoing marketing; understanding the inner workings of the industry to be targeted (so we can “talk the talk”); creating a reputation as an expert in the field; cultivating genuine relationships; and relentless follow-up. He made the argument that these practices can reduce the disadvantages we face and up the advantages through specializing, providing a camera-ready deliverable, and being multifaceted in our professional service offerings.

Paul and the participants discussed the need to talk to companies about their users and their users' experiences with, and needs for, their products. He cited the example of a completely useless car owner's manual—you don't notice the poor-quality index until you have a breakdown and cannot locate the information you need. We need to prove to companies that the index is needed and how we can create that usefulness for them.

We discussed our placement and nomenclature in the information age. We might be wise to broaden our self-description to “information professional” rather than (only) an indexer, as many people have never heard of indexing or do not understand it. The value of the organization of information is not yet recognized enough or widely, despite the need for this skill-set right now.

This was an apt session to conclude the conference with. By the end of this fruitful and broad discussion about the future of our profession, interest was expressed in creating a SIG (special interest group) by some who signed up for further communication. Those who missed this session but would like more information on establishing an indexing industry SIG can contact Paul Sweum at Paul@TopHatWordandIndex.com or by calling him at (520) 271-2112.

Vanessa Wells

Conference Session Summaries

IXMLembedder: Index Entry Embedding Software

David K. Ream

This was another session I was very keen on when I first saw the lineup of speakers. David Ream has made the software to end all embedding software—at least, that's what I suppose. David's session was scheduled to last half an hour but he thought he had an hour, so a little mêlée ensued as we ran quickly into the lunch hour.

There was no introduction to this session; I guess it was expected that you knew what this software was about before walking in. Forty people were crammed into the room, some standing, eager to hear about how this software can help with their embedding. It was not a session for beginners.

David briefly showed us how his software works with MS Word and CINDEX (it also works with InDesign and Tagsets) and we got to see a little of how IXMLembedder looks. The software works with whatever constraints your platform has; for instance, you cannot do two indexes simultaneously in a Word document. because Word does not allow it.

Though the presentation was rushed, we did get a sense that this software is worth the investment if it works as smoothly as claimed. I can say firsthand that SKY Index, InDesign, and KPS Tools have not been super-smooth for me, so I will likely invest in David's software if I choose to continue down the embedding path. He will be presenting IXMLembedder again at the ASI's East Coast regional indexing meeting in November.

One piece of trivia: when David asked whether participants used WordEmbed or TextEmbed, there were more users of WordEmbed.

Siusan Moffat

Marnie Lamb, Heather Ebbs, Caroline Diepeveen, Alex Peace, Stephen Ullstrom, Barbara Cuerdon, Mary Newberry. (Photo courtesy of Anna Olivier.)

Conference Session Summaries

To Textbooks, with Love

Leoni McVey

I found Leoni McVey's seminar on textbook indexing very accessible and her handouts very useful, especially for relatively new indexers or those who have no background in education. [Sidebar: I was perturbed by a discussion of how and when American students are taught to use indexes, because as a former teacher, I don't ever recall seeing Ontario curriculum guidelines about teaching index use, and I wondered if this was a cross-country omission.¹] She pointed out factors that might not occur to people without a background in education: the very wide range of audience (new readers to college level to adult learners), the variables encompassing student and teacher textbook editions, and the versions and features of book layout and indexing requirements (bolding, semester vs. term structures, callouts). She stressed the need to establish with the assigning editor the parameters of the index before the project begins, as well as to request the table of contents and other front and back matter even if they are not to be indexed, since key points might otherwise be missed.

Leoni's handouts illustrated the various considerations needed for different types of textbooks, since different disciplines often have their own indexing conventions. Literary books, for example, might index by title, author, first line, category, or all of these, either separately or together. Management, economics, and business texts might have subject and corporate name indexes. Behavioural sciences might separate names and subjects. Educational pedagogy would require entries about how to teach certain skills. Other advice about alphabetization, sorting, acronyms, bias, and formatting was also provided.

Leoni suggested that if separate (for example, name) indexes are to be created, they should be charged separately, since it is the indexing that is being invoiced for, not the (perhaps) one reading involved. I found another practicality that was addressed to be helpful: queries may best be handled by flagging issues (with **, for instance). These can later be removed and a separate query list created and sent to the editor, thus avoiding the potential confusion of sending the completed index with interspersed queries. Contrary to my training in indexing, it was obvious from the handouts that numerous one-locator entries can be very common and, indeed, necessary in textbook index creation.

Finally, Leoni reiterated for those who had no teaching experience that it is not necessary to index only texts for which they have the education and disciplinary background. Her guideline is that deduction is the imperative skill to have. If a project means tackling a new area, the indexer should feel comfortable with it, and there is a need to be flexible, since textbook indexing is not always formulaic.

Vanessa Wells

¹ For an interesting report on a Canadian study about teaching children index use, see Valerie Nesset's “A look at classification and indexing practices for elementary school children: who are we really serving?” in The Indexer 34(ii), June 2016.

Conference Session Summaries

Indexing Oral History

Mary Newberry and Lee Berry

Mary began with the history of Harbord Village, a downtown neighbourhood near the University of Toronto. It is densely populated, with a diverse immigrant population, and has a mix of housing, much adapted for multiple families. Most streets in the area have laneways behind them. Recently the City of Toronto decided it wanted the laneways named for safety and emergency response. The Harbord Village Residents Association (HVRA) took on the project, naming the laneways after living or deceased residents.

The oral history project developed out of this.¹ More than 100 current or former residents who lived in the area between 1930 and 1980 were interviewed. The interviews were all conducted by the same person, using a template of questions. During this time the HVRA decided that the interviews needed an index, its target audience being the neighbours and the public. Old black-and-white photographs were scattered throughout the presentation, giving a wonderful snapshot of the neighbourhood and a sense of the personalities involved—a human face for the content.

With more than 100 interviews, the challenge was to have it all searchable but at the same time not to take the indexer forever to complete. How could this be accomplished? It was decided to use three distinct levels of approach: a combination of (1) a broad categorical taxonomy; (2) a thematic and name taxonomy; and (3) a free-for-all (more or less) laden with snippets of key emotional expressions that the indexer observed in the interviews—these were generally short quotes from the interviews. To illustrate:

First level: Businesses

Second level: Brunswick Fish Market

Third level: bring home fish/carp; swimming in bathtub, Rae Gold 0:17:00

Mary referred to the first categorical level as not so much content analysis as “laundry sorting.”

A secondary challenge was how to deal with the locators for an index covering multiple interviews. It was decided to preface the locator with the interviewee's last name and the time stamp of the audio file. (Indexing was done using the transcripts of the audio files, which had periodic time stamps inserted.)

The success of this oral history project lies in having all the transcripts indexed, the research that was undertaken to develop the broad categorical taxonomy, and its allowing for more discrete entries that gave a voice to the interviewee and an often interesting entry point into the audio file. One can see that a usable template was created that could be used for similar oral history projects. Taking the time to develop the top level of broad taxonomy allowed completion of the indexing in a timely fashion. With this structure you could include more indexers and train them quickly.

After Mary's presentation, Lee Berry presented on the current status of the oral history project at the Chemical Heritage Foundation—more than 400 transcripts from specialists in chemistry and related fields. She is in the process of restructuring the catalogue to make it more usable and is struggling with either working within the existing structure or beginning from scratch. From the dozen or so attendees present at this session came all kinds of suggestions of ways and means to recreate the existing structure or begin from scratch. It was a worthwhile discovery session in which both Lee and the attendees explored the best ways to develop a usable oral history. We are looking forward to hearing from Lee about what method she chose as the one that would work best for her.

Margaret de Boer

Note

¹ To read the transcripts from which the indexes were created or to hear the audio files of these interviews, visit Harbour Village oral history.

Buckingham Fountain,Chicago. (Photo courtesy of Anna Olivier.)

Link to Heather's interactive (digital) version of the crossword.

Crossword

Cole's Chorus

he seasonal song in the theme squares was a hit for Nat King Cole when it was published in 1963.

Heather Ebbs

Awards and Achievements

2016 Ewart-Daveluy Award

It is my great pleasure to announce that our colleague Mary Newberry has received the Ewart-Daveluy Award for Indexing Excellence. It was presented at the awards banquet of the joint conference of the Indexing Society of Canada and the American Society for Indexing in Chicago on June 16, 2016. The award honours Mary's indexing of The Letterbooks of John Evelyn, edited by Douglas D. C. Chambers and David Galbraith and published by University of Toronto Press.

The Letterbooks of John Evelyn is a two-volume work with 1,150 pages containing almost 900 letters between Evelyn and his 315 correspondents. John Evelyn, FRS, was an English writer, gardener, and diarist of the late 1600s. His diaries are the usual source material for scholars, but, like his diaries, Evelyn's letters cast considerable light on the art, culture, and politics of the time.

Making this material accessible to scholars was the job of the indexer, but it was not an easy job. The sheer volume of material was one issue; another was the archaic diction and writing style of the seventeenth century. A third was the need to serve scholars who are undoubtedly already familiar with the extensive index created for the 1955 publication of Evelyn's diaries and would expect some correlation, while also meeting modern indexing standards and user expectations. Interestingly, the index is not only printed in the books themselves but is also available online in a clickable format.

Despite these and other complications, Mary created a comprehensive index that demonstrates outstanding indexing expertise, analytical competence, and index design skill. More than that, it exemplifies the index as a work of art.

Heather Ebbs

Récompenses et réalisations

Prix Ewart-Daveluy 2016

J'ai le grand plaisir d'annoncer que Mary Newberry, notre chère collègue, a reçu le prix d'excellence en indexation Ewart-Daveluy. Ce prix lui a été décerné lors du banquet de remise des prix du congrès organisé conjointement par la Société canadienne d'indexation (SCI/ISC) et l'American Society for Indexing (ASI), à Chicago, le 16 juin 2016. Ce prix a été décerné à Mary en reconnaissance de la qualité de son travail d'indexation pour The Letterbooks of John Evelyn, édité par Douglas D. C. Chambers et David Galbraith et publié par la maison d'édition University of Toronto Press.

The Letterbooks of John Evelyn est un ouvrage de deux tomes, de 1150 pages et qui contient presque 900 lettres échangées entre M. Evelyn et ses 315 correspondants. John Evelyn, membre de la Société Royale, était un écrivain, paysagiste et mémorialiste anglais de la fin du 17e siècle. Son journal est, en général, la source principale de référence pour les lettrés, mais ses lettres constituent un témoignage précieux sur les arts, la culture et la politique de l'époque.

Le travail de l'indexeure était de rendre le contenu accessible aux lettrés, ce qui n'était pas une tâche facile. L'un des défis était le volume considérable de travail; un autre défi était le style d'écriture et la diction archaïque du 17e siècle. Un troisième défi posé par ce projet était de fournir un index efficace aux lettrés qui connaissaient déjà, sans aucun doute, l'index détaillé créé en 1955 pour la publication du journal de M. Evelyn et qui s'attendaient donc à une certaine corrélation, tout en respectant les normes actuelles d'indexation et en répondant aux attentes des usagers. Remarquons que cet index est imprimé non seulement dans les ouvrages eux-mêmes, mais qu'il est également disponible en ligne, en format cliquable.

Malgré ces complications (et d'autres que nous n'avons pas mentionnées), Mary a créé un index exhaustif qui reflète une expertise et des compétences analytiques et de conception d'index exceptionnelles. Mais plus que tout, son travail reflète de manière indiscutable qu'un index est, en réalité, une œuvre d'art.

Heather Ebbs

Awards and recognitions

Tamarack Award

At the 2016 conference banquet, Margaret de Boer proudly presented the Tamarack Award¹ to a beaming Mary Newberry with the following speech:

Congratulations, Mary! It is surely high time that you receive this Tamarack Award. How could it not be you?

To uphold the Tamarack Award tradition, I asked a select group of your colleagues to express their thanks to you. Their words display your unwavering ability and gift to nurture relationships and encourage our members on their path of indexing. Please listen to the voices of your colleagues Heather Ebbs, Jennifer Hedges, Alex Peace, François Trahan, and Gillian Watts:

Heather: Since before I met her in 2007, when I was elected president and she was already serving as the Member at Large, Publicity, Mary has been an unfailing supporter and leader for both indexing and the society. She has opened her home to us countless times for meetings and social gatherings. She has led committees and the society as a whole with strength and grace and wisdom and charm. Personally, I have turned to her many times over the years for advice and aid. Mary is simply wonderful, and I can't imagine an ISC/SCI without her.

Jennifer: I took on the co-presidency reluctantly. I agreed to it when I was assured that Mary was staying on as my fellow co-president. She is a kind and effective mentor and I learned so much from her. I always enjoyed seeing her in person at executive meetings and conferences, and felt privileged to stay in her home several times, where I also got to know her partner, Gus. Mary is an outstanding member of ISC/SCI, more than deserving of this year's Tamarack Award.

Alex: Mary is a very generous person. She is generous with her time, volunteering tirelessly for the Indexing Society; she is generous with her knowledge, teaching and helping newbie indexers; she is generous with her work, passing on jobs that she is too busy for; and she is generous with her home, billeting people during the conference and inviting the indexers over after a conference for a potluck and music. Mary does all this with humour and grace. I have been the beneficiary of much of Mary's generosity. I am so grateful and so glad to see that she will be recognized by the Indexing Society for all her contributions.

François: If you have ever been to an executive meeting and a project or task needed a volunteer, chances are that the first thing you'd hear is Mary saying, “I can do that” or “I'll help.” If we kept a tally, no doubt Mary would be ahead of any, if not all of us. But what's most incredible is that she often started with more tasks than others: she has just spent six years as co-president, and that's quite a load of responsibilities.

It's not only the ISC/SCI as an organization that benefits; she's always thinking of the full membership and she's working for indexing as a profession as well as for indexers as a community. She's simply indefatigable and I've always been impressed by her dedication. We are so lucky to have Mary as a colleague and mentor—her contribution to ISC/SCI and indexing is exceptional. Mary is truly a model of selfless commitment and enthusiasm. One example: I've attended five Tamarack Award presentations while Mary's been co-president and she always looked so happy to recognize others. Mary has probably deserved this award in recent years, but she was choosing the winner, so in one way I'm glad she's not co-president anymore, because we can finally give her the Tamarack Award.

Mary Newberry.
(Photo courtesy of Heather Ebbs.)

Gillian: Well, we all know we were only waiting for Mary to retire as our president so we could give her a Tamarack. She's been giving them out for so long it's ridiculous, considering how deserving she is of one herself.

I served several terms as treasurer and co-president under Mary's leadership, and I can't think of a better colleague. Her work ethic is astonishing, she always maintains a positive outlook, her dedication to the Society knows no parallel, her guidance is thoughtful and carefully planned, and she always seems to stay calm no matter what happens. Not only that, she's so generous and encouraging to everyone—fellow executives, committee participants, wannabes, the membership as a whole—that her enthusiasm is contagious. I envision a tamarack decoy decked out with a sparkly tiara and a royal blue sash, to celebrate our “queen of indexing.” Wouldn't that be fun?

Mary, what more is there for me to say? I echo every single word. I am so honoured to present this award to you. You have overwhelmingly encouraged me with affirmation and opportunities. Your faith in others is wide and boundless. Always optimistic, always smiling! For every part of your generous heart that you have given to the Indexing Society of Canada/Société canadienne d'indexation, please accept the Tamarack Award as a symbol of our thanks and gratitude.

Margaret de Boer

¹ Instituted in 2004 by Ruth Pincoe, then president, the Tamarack award recognizes members who go “above and beyond the call of duty” in their volunteer work for the Society. It is awarded annually by a subjective decision of the president or co-presidents.

Awards and recognitions

Prix tamarack

Lors du banquet du congrès 2016, Margaret de Boer a décerné, avec grande fierté, le prix Tamarack¹ à Mary Newberry qui était ravie de cet honneur. Voici le discours de Margaret :

Félicitations, Mary! Il est, sans aucun doute, grand temps de te décerner le prix Tamarack. Il serait inconcevable de ne pas t'avoir choisie cette année!

Afin de perpétuer la tradition du prix Tamarack, j'ai demandé à un groupe de collègues, soigneusement choisis de t'exprimer leurs remerciements. Leurs éloges reflètent ta capacité inébranlable et ton don unique à entretenir de chaleureuses relations et à aider nos membres à s'épanouir dans leur carrière. J'ai donc le plaisir de présenter tes collègues Heather Ebbs, Jennifer Hedges, Alex Peace, François Trahan et Gillian Watts :

Heather : Avant que je ne la rencontre en 2007, lorsque j'ai été élue présidente et qu'elle remplissait les fonctions de membre associée, publicité, Mary faisait déjà preuve d'un dévouement sans limites au monde de l'indexation et à la Société. Elle nous a accueillis chez elle de nombreuses fois, que ce soit pour des réunions professionnelles ou des soirées à caractère social. Elle a dirigé divers comités et la Société dans son ensemble avec détermination, courtoisie, sagesse et gentillesse. Je me suis souvent adressée à elle au cours des années pour lui demander conseil et soutien. Mary est tout simplement quelqu'un d'exceptionnel et je ne peux imaginer la SCI sans elle.

Jennifer : J'ai longtemps hésité avant d'accepter le poste de co-présidente. Mais j'ai fini par dire oui quand on m'a assuré que Mary continuerait à remplir les fonctions de co-présidente. Mary m'a énormément appris, et ceci toujours avec une grande gentillesse et efficacité. Cela me faisait grand plaisir à chaque fois que je la voyais en personne pendant les réunions du bureau de direction et pendant les congrès et j'ai eu l'honneur d'être accueillie chez elle à plusieurs reprises. C'est à cette occasion que j'ai d'ailleurs eu la chance de faire la connaissance de Gus, son compagnon. Mary a des qualités exceptionnelles et elle mérite, sans aucun doute, de recevoir le prix Tamarack.

Alex : Mary est quelqu'un de très généreux, et ceci à tant de niveaux : son temps, car elle continue à travailler bénévolement et sans répit pour la Société; ses connaissances, car elle forme et aide les indexeurs débutants; les offres de travail, car elle propose les projets qu'elle n'a pas le temps de faire à d'autres membres et finalement, son hospitalité, car elle loge d'autres indexeurs pendant les congrès ou les invite chez elle après un congrès pour une soirée « potluck » et musique. Mary est toujours pleine d'humour et de gentillesse. J'ai souvent eu le plaisir d'être une des récipiendaires de sa générosité. Je suis si heureuse et reconnaissante que les contributions de Mary à la Société soient reconnues.

François : Si vous avez participé à une réunion du bureau de direction et qu'il fallait un volontaire pour s'occuper d'un projet ou d'une tâche, il est très probable que la première chose que vous ayez entendue était Mary, offrant de « s'en occuper » ou « de nous aider ». Si je faisais le compte, je n'ai aucun doute que Mary serait en tête. Mais ce qui est encore plus incroyable, c'est qu'elle avait souvent déjà plus de travail que les autres, dès le départ. Elle était, entre autres, co-présidente pendant six ans et ce poste inclut de lourdes responsabilités.

Mais ce n'est pas seulement la SCI/ISC en tant qu'organisation qui profite de la générosité de Mary. Mary travaille pour l'ensemble des membres et elle est engagée à améliorer la profession dans son ensemble ainsi qu'à promouvoir un sens de communauté parmi les indexeurs. Elle est tout simplement infatigable et j'ai toujours été impressionné par son dévouement. C'est un privilège que d'avoir Mary comme collègue et comme mentor – sa contribution à la SCI/ISC et au monde de l'indexation est exceptionnelle. Mary est un exemple parfait de ce que signifient les mots « engagement » et « enthousiasme ». Permettez-moi de vous donner un exemple : J'étais présent à cinq cérémonies d'attribution du prix Tamarack pendant que Mary était co-présidente et elle a toujours semblé si heureuse de reconnaitre le travail des autres. Mary méritait, sans aucun doute, de recevoir elle aussi ce prix pendant les cinq dernières années, mais c'est elle qui choisissait le récipiendaire alors, d'une certaine façon, je suis heureux qu'elle ne soit plus co-présidente, car nous pouvons finalement lui décerner le prix Tamarack.

Mary Newberry.
(Photo courtesy of Heather Ebbs.)

Gillian : Eh bien, nous savons tous que nous attendions que Mary quitte ses fonctions de présidente pour pouvoir enfin lui remettre le prix Tamarack. Elle l'a, elle-même, décerné pendant si longtemps que c'en est presque ridicule, car elle mérite, sans aucun doute, de recevoir ce prix.

J'ai rempli plusieurs mandats de trésorière et de co-présidente sous la direction de Mary et elle a été pour moi une collègue exceptionnelle. Son éthique de travail est unique, elle garde toujours une vision positive de la situation, son dévouement pour la Société est sans pareil, elle conseille avec gentillesse et prévenance et semble toujours calme, même au milieu de la tempête. Mais ce n'est pas tout; elle fait preuve de tant de générosité et d'encouragement envers les autres membres du bureau de direction, les participants aux comités, ceux qui ont l'ambition de travailler dans ce domaine et les membres dans leur ensemble que son enthousiasme est contagieux. J'ai en tête l'image d'un leurre en bois de mélèze paré d'une tiare brillante et d'une écharpe bleu royal, symbole de célébration de notre « Reine de l'indexation ». Ce serait drôle, vous ne pensez pas?

Mary, que reste-t-il à dire? Je ne peux que confirmer tout ce qui a été dit. C'est un grand honneur pour moi de te présenter ce prix. Tu m'as toujours tellement encouragée, par tes félicitations et les occasions que tu m'as données. Tu as une foi illimitée dans les autres. Toujours optimiste, toujours souriante! Afin de célébrer ta généreuse et chaleureuse contribution à la Société canadienne d'indexation/Indexing Society of Canada, j'espère que tu accepteras le prix Tamarack comme symbole de nos remerciements et de notre gratitude.

Margaret de Boer

¹ Créé en 2004 par Ruth Pincoe, présidente de l'époque, le prix Tamarack est décerné aux membres qui « vont au-delà des attentes exigées par leurs fonctions » dans leur travail de bénévolat pour la Société. Il est décerné chaque année suite à une décision subjective du/de la président(e) ou des co-président(e)s.

Awards and recognitions

Certificates of Recognition

The strength of a non-profit organization may be found in its volunteers. Two years ago Mary Newberry and Jennifer Hedges (and maybe some others) decided that a Certificate of Recognition was needed to recognize some hard-working people in our society. This year the four members we would like to recognize for their hard work and dedication are:

Alex Peace: For her exuberance and energy getting things done out east and her ability to think outside the box.

Andrea Hatley: For her dedication, fresh creativity, and expertise in the production of the Bulletin.

Heather Ebbs: For her encyclopedic knowledge and kindness. Need an answer? Ask Heather!

Siusan Moffat: For her expertise and hard work organizing informative meetings for Toronto-area indexers.

Margaret de Boer

Awards and recognitions

What Winning the Conference Subsidy Meant to Me

Anne Godlewski

I was ecstatic to hear Margaret tell me that I had been awarded a subsidy to attend the conference this year. Receiving this financial assistance took a huge weight off my shoulders: I would not have attended otherwise. I'm grateful and proud to belong to an organization that is sensitive to its members' concerns and extends such significant support. Thank you!

Marnie Lamb

When Margaret phoned to tell me I'd won the scholarship, I felt as though a knapsack holding several doorstopper textbooks had been lifted from my back. The money freed me from concerns about balancing work and life while still working enough to cover the cost of the conference and the accommodation. Instead I could allocate my money to meals with colleagues at some of Chicago's epic restaurants, the fabulous architectural boat tour, and Garrett's popcorn! Thanks, ISC/SCI, for making a great conference even sweeter!

Anna Olivier

Gagner ce prix m'a remplie de joie et m'a permis non seulement de réaliser un rêve de jeunesse (voir les plus anciens gratte.ciel du monde) mais davantage encore (séjourner dans l'un deux!). Merci—j'ai adoré mon séjour!

Vanessa Wells

Conference scholarship, benefits enabled by: catered breaks, indulgence in; experts, exposure to; getting out of the house; introductions to like.minded colleagues; learning, continued; new resources, discovery of; opportunities to give back; reassurance of being on the right track; reference material, acquisition of; relationship building; skills development. See also session write.ups

Awards and recognitions

Q&A with Mary Newberry, 2016 Ewart-Daveluy Award Winner

Why does the index to The Letterbooks of John Evelyn> merit the award?

There were numerous issues to work out for an index to this text. A challenge even before beginning was the extensive (and glorious) index created by Esmond Samuel de Beer for the 1955 edition of The Diary of John Evelyn. Knowing that scholars using the Letterbooks index would be familiar with de Beer's and expect some correlation, how to create a modern and, by necessity, less detailed index? Yet comprehensiveness was important. The text is long (more than 1,000 pages), with complex supporting material.

So how to keep the entries clear and intuitive? This is primary material, and therefore it's important that all mentions of people—even seemingly insignificant ones such as “I kiss the hands of so-and-so”—should be findable. In the same vein, glosses were necessary; there were numerous Evelyns, for one thing, and then there were all those aristocratic titles. McGill-Queen's house style is run-in, so what to do with complex entries that required subentries, such as those for John Evelyn himself? And finally, should the letter numbers be included and flagged, and if so, how? I think the final index manages to address these issues successfully and is a useful tool.

The 1955 edition of Evelyn's diaries was published with an index. What kind of research into this index, or indexes for other letter collections, did you do before starting your index?

I was given access to this index online, and it's amazing. If you ever have a chance to look at it, it's such a pleasure for an indexer to view it—so detailed, idiosyncratic, analytic, and, as I remember it, funny, in an indexing sort of way. I made notes of some entries that might be useful in the Letterbooks index. Here are some examples from de Beer's index to the Diaries (these are subentries under Evelyn):

- Evelyn, John:

- accidents and dangers [falls, &c., affecting E's health are indexed under Evelyn: healthbelow; see also robberies and thefts below]

- Animals [mammals; select notices; for other animals see Birds; Fish; Insects; Reptiles; Toads; Worms; Monsters; Animals, fabulous]

- Deer [select notices]: effect on, of severe winter, iv. 363, 364; about Siena (as venison), ii. 206 etc. . . .

Looking at the final index, I see that I used “robberies and thefts” (not “accidents and dangers”) and “animals,” and I used “deer and venison” as a cross-reference to “food and drink.”—these all as main entries, not necessarily entries under Evelyn. We also had to come up with a short form for John Evelyn other than “E,” which is what de Beer used, because “E” was already used for something else. We used JE.

One of the things John Evelyn was known for was his gardening books and pamphlets. In particular he was interested in the growing of tall, straight trees so that England would always have material to build masts for its fleet of ships (of course, the English navy no longer requires trees for masts). I wonder what he would think now, knowing that his name has come down into popular culture today for his gardening, in a way—through the Crabtree and Evelyn skincare products, which are named after him (this fact was dug up by Alexandra Peace, who helped me with the project).

Just around the time I was working on this index, I attended Margie Towery's workshop “Ten Principles for Creating Better Indexes,” at the 2014 indexing conference in Toronto. She talked about the use of the subentries for “mentions,” important when indexing texts from primary sources, such as this project. She said that she will sometimes use the sub “mentioned,” particularly for names. I made good use of this tip in this index. I forced the “mentioned” sub to the end of the entry and used it for situations such as the elaborate greetings at the opening and closing of letters; they often involving hand-kissing of everyone in a household or those who had possibly visited in the past year. There can be situations where this mention places a person at a time and place significant for historical reasons.

You index several books every year. What was it about this index that made you choose to submit it instead of one of your others?

I actually submitted two books. I chose this one because it was such a monumental task and of historical significance. I was somewhat uncertain about the submission, though, for that very reason: because of its size, I felt uncertain about its quality. Had I managed to keep the standard high throughout? I was very grateful for the help I received from Alex, and I also had a sense that the copy editor, Miriam Skey, had done a thorough job of checking. This gave me the confidence to go ahead.

The other book I submitted was Surface Imaginations: Cosmetic Surgery, Photography, and Skin, by Rachel Alpha Johnston Hurst. Of course, I have no idea what the judges thought of that index, but I chose it because the author was able to give me time and space to create it, by booking me in advance and paying me well. The book was clearly a labour of love for her, and it involved an interesting and complex argument. Texts such as these are like delightful puzzles—the indexer needs to find all the bits of a multidimensional argument and make them accessible.

The Letterbooks must contain numerous names. Did you include them all or did you leave out those you deemed passing mentions?

I did have to leave out names. David Galbraith, one of the editors of the collection, and I discussed this ahead of time. John Evelyn was a notorious list maker. David, before I even began, warned me of this, drew my attention to a few of these long lists of names, and suggested that they should not be indexed in detail. I think in all of the cases these were names in lists composed by JE, not mentions of actual encounters with people. (Although I think there was a party he attended where he named all the guests. I treated this list in a similar way to the following example.)

So, for example, under “art and art collections,” there is a sub “list of learned and heroic persons (men and women), 440–1, 897–9.” The mentions in these lists are significant as cultural history, and so are findable, but they would have clogged the index immeasurably. In a search of my index I found 30 occurrences of “list”!

What aspect of your index or the indexing process gave you the most joy?

What a great question! It's been a while, so I can't be sure, but what has stuck with me are the personal and domestic aspects of John Evelyn's life that came to light through the building of the index, aspects that are buried otherwise. By this I mean such things as his and his wife's numerous illnesses and the uncountable letters of condolence he wrote for deaths of babies and mothers during childbirth.

I also loved that he was concerned about indexes and indexing. He included his own index to the Letterbooks and was very concerned about the quality and standards of publishing; this expressly included the necessity of “good indexes.” A small personal happiness had to do with my life-partner, Rory Gus Sinclair, a talented piper—I was excited to find a mention of a “Bag-pipe.” I resisted, however, including it in the index.

One benefit of indexing is that it offers the indexer the chance to learn about a particular subject area. What is the most fascinating thing you learned about Evelyn or seventeenth-century English society?

There is a lot that fits into this category. Here are a few examples.

I loved hearing about the small domestic concerns, some of which I've already mentioned concerning illness and death. I got a real sense of the difficulty of travel and the value of modern medicine through Evelyn's many mentions of being too ill or not having enough strength to leave his place in the country and travel to London and elsewhere. His wife and daughter loved to go to the mineral baths for their health, but Evelyn suspected it was more for the gossip than the health. He was suspicious of their benefits and resentful of the time going to the baths took away from “all thoughts of your Pencil,” as he worded it to his daughter Susanna. He also mentions another daughter as having ague, which he considers to be a result of eating too much fruit.

At one point John Evelyn took on the position of Commissioner for the Sick and Wounded and Prisoners of War. He describes, in quite a bit of detail, the terrible conditions of the prisoners and the lack of support from the government and its broken promises. He expresses sympathy for their plight and outrage at his inability to improve it. He paid out of his own pocket for some improvements and then spent many years trying to get reimbursed.

Marnie Lamb

Mary's Acknowledgements

Both Margaret de Boer and Alexandra Peace helped me in the final stages of this index. Alex in particular was an invaluable proofreader and sounding board, helping to solve some of the issues already mentioned. When I asked Alex to remind me about her participation, she found that she had noted “countless hours” but also that it was “fun.” David Galbraith was very helpful in answering my questions (particularly about aristocratic titles) and in giving me access to resource material such as the de Beer index. And finally, the copy editor for the project, Miriam Skey, carefully reviewed and corrected the entries and finessed the headnote when I no longer had any ability to make another decision.

Tech Tidbits, Tips, and Tricks

CINDEX Tips: Working with Volume Numbers

This may seem complex, but CINDEX will do the “heavy lifting” if you bear in mind two general principles when working with multiple volumes:

- enter only one page number or range per record, and

- precede each with the volume number.

At first glance this may seem like a lot of extra effort, but it will pay dividends when you need to cumulate the volumes, and it will always provide you with full capability to search and edit the growing index.

Following the “rules” above allows CINDEX to arrange and display the references correctly in Full Format view (that is, suppressing the repeated volume number), style the index as you wish, and concatenate the page numbers with a comma. It will also provide your preferred punctuation between references to one volume number and another.

You may wish to employ either of the two following settings to reduce keying and improve accuracy in the page field: (1) either set CARRY LOCATORS FORWARD (PREFERENCES/EDITING TAB/ADDING/CARRY LOCATORS FORWARD) or (2) set the volume number prefix as a Hot Key or Function Key.

Volume Number Form

Volume numbers are usually Arabic or Roman numerals, but you might also come across alphabetic characters as a volume designator, although this is more common with indexes covering different publications. Most volume numbers are separated from their page numbers by a colon, but other forms of punctuation (including spaces) are sometimes used—for example, 10:1–6 or 10,1–6 or 10 1–6.

If you have any say in the matter, the first example (with colon) not only helps the reader clearly and quickly determine where volume number ends and page number begins, it also prevents potential problems with formatting and arrangement of references.

A drawback of the comma separator is that CINDEX is set up to assume that a comma separates individual page references, so in the second example above (10,1–6), CINDEX will actually display and arrange it as: 1–6, 10. If you are required to use a comma to the separate volume number from its page number, you will need to change the default setting (comma) at DOCUMENT MENU/REFERENCE SYNTAX/PAGE REFERENCES/LOCATOR, from a comma to another form of punctuation (a semicolon is a reasonable alternative).

Volume Number Suppression and Style

While it is important for CINDEX to correctly associate page number with volume number (that is, repeating the volume number in the records), you do not normally wish to recreate this repetition when exporting the final file. To suppress volume numbers in Full Format view, go to DOCUMENT MENU/PAGE REFERENCES/MULTI-PART REFERENCES, check Suppress Repeated Parts, and in the Suppress to box enter the punctuation that separates volume from page number. For example:

At the same time you can tell CINDEX how you wish the volume number to be styled (bold, italic, etc.). Click on the Style button and choose your preferred style. So if you choose to bold the volume number and colon, these references entered across individual records — I:23 I:48-53 I:106 III:5 III:67-68 IV:200 V:34 V:89-91 — will format as I: 23, 48-53, 106, III:5, 67-68, IV:200, V:34, 89-91 .

A Word about Roman Numerals

CINDEX will recognize Roman numerals (commonly used as volume markers or for front matter in books). To ensure that these are evaluated and sorted correctly you will need to tell CINDEX how to handle them when entered in the page field. Go to TOOLS MENU/SORT/LOCATORS/TYPE PRECEDENCE and click on Roman numerals to add a + to the line, then drag and drop the line at the top of the list.

Additional Considerations

If you elect to compile the index to each volume in separate files, you can save the insertion of the volume number until the end by using pattern replacement. In this instance, “56:” is the volume marker:

- Find: ^[1-9]

- Change to: 56:\&

You should select Page from the Field drop-down menu and check the Pattern box. If you only have one page number or range per record this will add the volume number to every locator. If you have been tempted to enter more that one number or range to a record then you must use Tools/Menu/Expand before you insert the volume number.

And, as always, back up your index before making the pattern replacement, or use FILE MENU/REVERT TO SAVED in the event of an unexpected result.

If your client has other stylistic and punctuation requests, we are happy to point you to the right settings. Contact us at support@indexres-com.

Frances Lennie, Indexing Research, Rochester, NY

Tech Tidbits, Tips, and Tricks

IndexConvert

IndexConvert (http://www.indexbase.co.uk) is a Microsoft Word add-in for importing indexes into CINDEX, MACREX, or SKY Index. It also supports import into a spreadsheet or a database. English and French back-of-the-book indexes and English legal indexes have been converted and a wide range of left-to-right languages can be supported. The principal user interface supports a process flow from top to bottom, with additional functionality to the right of the main buttons. The control buttons are shown in the figure below and are briefly described here.

Configuration allows entry of the user licence and sets up the export.

Metrics shows how many indexes and entries have been processed and shows the licence allowance.

Preprocess closes up empty lines, removes single letter-group hs, and prompts the user about manual adjustments that may be needed.

Label hs saves h parameters. When the user selects Level 1, the presence of a variety of space characters, tabs, insets, and character size are all used to uniquely identify h parameters. When a new h style is identified, the user is asked, “Is this a Level 1 h?” If confirmed, the parameters are remembered and all entries with the same parameters are then labelled “$H1_.” The same process is repeated for Level 2, Level 3, and so forth.

Label Locators searches for predefined combinations of punctuation and surrounding characters. When they are found, the user is asked, “Is this a FIRST locator?” If the answer is yes, the parameters are remembered and the search continues for another predefined combination. When the search is complete, all selected first-locator types are labelled “$L_.” Ambiguous entries are labelled as errors. The [ i ] button sets locator options. Roman numerals, cross-references, and prefixes can be chosen to extend IndexConvert's capability.

Audit inserts error labels where there are inconsistencies.

Audit Report contains the entries with error labels. This group can be used when deciding the changes to make.

Concatenate turns the index into a delimited file.

Label Styles inserts labels to identify bold, italics, underline, small caps, subscript, and superscript.

Export creates the file type selected by Configuration.

Exit exits the program. IndexConvert is designed to allow frequent exits to review progress.

Specifications

h levels

9 levels by default; 10+ available

Locator types

IndexConvert comes with a comprehensive locator-matching library for finding numeric locators. Roman numerals, locator prefixes, and additional cross-reference terms can be combined with the existing library, offering over 60,000 combinations.

Styles

Bold, underline, italics, small caps, subscript, and superscript are all labelled. All underline styles used by Word are identified but are labelled the same way.

File export

CINDEX is a tab-delimited Unicode file or an IXML file.

MACREX is a comma-delimited ANSI MBK file. Unicode characters can be replaced by printer replacement codes.

SKY Index is a tab-delimited ANSI file with one locator per entry. Unicode characters can be replaced by translation codes.

Spreadsheet is a tab-delimited Unicode file.

Database is a tab-delimited Unicode file with one locator per entry.

Barry Campbell

Book Reviews

Indexing Tactics & Tidbits

Janet Perlman (Information Today, 2016)

Indexing from A to Z (which I have not read), Perlman's book is organized in alphabetical order by topic, starting with “Aboutness” and ending with “Work Methods and Workflow.” The format invites browsing, and I enjoyed picking up the book, opening it at random, and seeing where the topics and internal cross-references took me. The structure also lends itself well to easily searching for and focusing on specific topics that you may want to find. Information is clearly labelled with hs and subhs, and sections are at most a few pages long.

The breadth of information covered is impressive, with several sections on the business and techniques of indexing, including getting started, negotiations, and bidding on projects. I was glad to see sections on quality and elegance in indexes—elegance being an intriguing approach to a document that otherwise needs to be precise and readily usable. There is an interesting discussion of mashups, and, being Canadian, I was glad to see that the “Professional Societies” section included societies beyond ASI (though society newsletters, including the ISC/SCI Bulletin, did not make the cut under “The Literature of Indexing”). I also found Perlman's discussion of her indexing workflow, as well as her interactions with clients, to be informative, as hearing from others often is. There is much in this book that justifies the tactics in the title, which I define as a reasonably extensive discussion of the topic.

On the downside, a number of entries fall under tidbits, which seems to me to provide insufficient discussion. Of course, a short entry alone does not indicate lack of information. I thought the four brief paragraphs discussing certification to be adequate, though some expansion on the Institute of Certified Indexers would be helpful. “History of Indexing” and “Marketing,” however, should be expanded on, and the information under “Function Words” could be better integrated with “Prepositions” or the entries for “And” and “On.”

The tidbits feed into another aspect of the book, which is that Perlman refers the reader extensively to additional resources. In a way the book functions as an index to the pre-existing literature, and the reader is perhaps best served by having those other resources on hand too. I think this approach is fine so long as Perlman does provide adequate discussion of the topic along with the references. Where it falls short is when she primarily refers.

I would recommend this book as a great introduction to indexing. It might be particularly useful for someone who is unsure if indexing is for them, as the format is accessible and the information presented in bite-sized chunks. For the committed or experienced indexer, there is good food for thought here too. Browsing might lead to rethinking an aspect of your business or craft—I am already rethinking my use of prepositions. Then again, if you already have a well-stocked indexing library, you may find the topics covered here repetitious and your existing library sufficient.

Stephen Ullstrom

Book Reviews

What Is an Index? A Few Notes on Indexes and Indexers, 2nd ed.

Henry B. Wheatley (London: Longmans, Green, 1879), 132 pp.

Marcus Aurelius called fame fleeting. I find it fickle. The English scholar and bibliophile Henry Benjamin Wheatley (1838–1917) is regarded in Britain as perhaps the greatest indexer of his age—the annual Wheatley Medal for best British index is named in his honour—but the name itself seems to stop at the Atlantic.

Wheatley's contributions to his world are far too numerous to be described fully here. I have just skimmed his histories of London; his biographies of Pepys and Hogarth; his collection of French, Latin, and English anagrams; his treatises on bookbinding and on book dedications; and his manual on the formation of public and private libraries. I have held a nine-volume edition of Pepys' diary, issued in the 1890s, for which Wheatley was the sole editor. (According to Pepys scholar Robert Latham, however, Wheatley's Pepys was replete with serious mistakes.) He edited plays from the 1500s. He was fascinated with topography. As with Edmund Wilson, did the man's curiosity even have borders?

It should not surprise us that a mind such as Wheatley's would fall into indexing. Few book indexes can in fact be attributed without doubt to Wheatley, though much of his published work in general was anonymous. Nonetheless, in 1902 he issued one of the first guides to indexing, the comprehensive How to Make an Index. He had already written the entry on indexing in the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1875–89). (The indexing entry in the classic 11th edition of 1910–11 was, sadly, only an abbreviation of Wheatley's original.) Our concern here, though, is What Is an Index?, from 1878, possibly the first book in English to confront that question—that fact alone would make the monograph a curiosity. Thankfully, Wheatley's knowledge was great enough that What Is an Index? is a good deal more.

Wheatley bisects his book. The first half explores, across time and languages, the history of the words index, table, register, calendar, summary, and syllabus (his enumeration). He continues with dense and learned descriptions of indexer bias, bad judgement, and incompetence, with excellent and often hilarious examples. The second half, sliced into three chapters, combines practical instruction with psychological approaches and further theory, and is the more immediately useful half.

Two appendices follow. The first—a numbered list of basic indexing rules—is curt, smart, insufficient, often useful, and sometimes archaic. The second is an astonishing 35-page enumerative bibliography, starting in 1550, of published indexes and concordances. Wheatley closes the second edition (1879) with an index, which apparently the earlier edition was lacking. The index is thorough and elegant but strangely misses the occasional expected entry.

At his best, Wheatley gives good common sense: “It has been said that a bad index is better than no index at all, but this is open to question, as the incomplete index deceives the consulter.” Shrewd reflection: “The worst blunders are not made by the ignorant, but by those who think themselves clever and jump to unwarranted conclusions.” Sensible guidance: “Many of the best indexes are indexes and something more; that is, information is added which may not be in the book itself, such as the date of birth and death of the persons mentioned, in order to distinguish between those bearing the same proper names.” Tight eloquence: “The alphabetical arrangement is so simple, so convenient, and so easily understood by all, that it has naturally superseded the other forms, but some still cling to the rags of classification, in the belief it is a more scientific arrangement.” And on every page his knowledge proves extraordinary—not a word I use casually.

It should not be shocking to hear that the text is also, often, dated. Certain error examples are tied to the problems of the printing press as technology; they could never apply to computer software. Examples of specific writers and indexes are likely no longer familiar to most audiences. At some point the book becomes a sluice box: the reader must sift the gold from the gravel. It is a process that takes, at certain times, a mild patience, and at other times, a sharp tenacity. The principal faults of Victorian academic prose are also present. The tone is a bit too stuffy, sentences a bit too long, paragraphs a bit too wordy, chapters a bit too dense. I will be plain—the style will not suffocate. Still, it's a slow scan.

At one time indexers no doubt consulted their Wheatleys time and again, in the same way that painters today use Robert Henri's The Art Spirit or stage director Peter Brook's The Empty Space. For the indexer, that time is gone, but do take the ship once. (The full Britannica entry is de facto a synopsis of the book, and is thus a good port of call.) The better parts still apply and its importance is therefore permanent.

Providence provides an anecdote. The 1879 copy I consulted was purchased by the Toronto Public Library on March 1, 1884, making the monograph among the first the institution ever acquired. The purchases register and the matching internal book number confirm this fact. Acquisitions started only that year, and the library itself did not even open until March 6. Who made that choice to order What Is an Index? Who decided that Wheatley's book was so important that it had to be among the first bought, perhaps even the first? I could not find out. But it seems clear that this person, by that act alone, knew how much this one book mattered, and why.

Boyd Holmes

Note

The two copies I examined were a second edition, published in 1879, and a reprint from 2002. The reprint was largely a facsimile copy of the 1879 edition. Each copy was encased in near-bulletproof burgundy covers and shared the same shape; the experience of reading the 2002 copy was thus the same. Other accessible reprints, by different publishers, have appeared in paperback. They include one by BiblioLife in 2008 and two more by Cambridge University Press and Nabu Press, both in 2010.

Executive Reports

Vice-president's Report

The main task I attended to since February was the 2016 joint conference. Though Kate Mertes and Gwen Henson dealt with almost everything, I gave feedback—in many cases with Mary Newberry's help—for matters relating specifically to ISC/SCI.

As Margaret has mentioned, the sudden resignation of Jennifer Hedges has affected our workload, but less so in my case than in Margaret's.

François Trahan

Executive Reports

Past President's Report

In some ways this has been a mixed year for me as past president. It was exciting to pass the mantle to two well-qualified people, Jennifer Hedges and Margaret de Boer. I enjoyed being the recipient of their intelligent questions and a sounding board for their thoughts and ideas. And it was rather nice not to be carrying the responsibility of co-president.

It was with great sadness that at the end of March I heard of Jennifer Hedge's illness and her need to step down. Jennifer has fulfilled many roles in this organization (and continues to carry a few) and has always done so with dignity and grace. Margaret de Boer graciously and seamlessly stepped in to command.

Otherwise, I shared some minor responsibilities with François Trahan for the 2016 joint indexing conference with the American Society of Indexers. I look forward to spending time and sharing information with our American colleagues in what I anticipate will be an interesting and stimulating time. It's too bad we had bad luck with the timing of our low Canadian dollar, so it will be incumbent upon those of us able to attend to report back to the rest of the Society.

I look forward to another interesting year.

Mary Newberry

Executive Reports

Treasurer’s Report

As of June 1, 2016, the financial status of the Society is as follows:

Everyday business chequing account: $28,682.37
Guaranteed Investment Certificate: $5,261.90 (interest rate 0.9%; locked in until July 20, 2017)
Security Guaranteed Investment Certificate Plus: $5,255.83 (interest rate fluctuates; locked in until October 14, 2017)

The budget and actual spending for January 2015 to March 2016 was:

2015 Budget

Jan–Mar 2015

Apr 2015–Mar 2016

15-Month Total Income

Income

Membership fees

11,500

2,720

9,620

12,340

Conference revenue

12,000

4,490

3,018

7,508

Find an Indexer fees

3,200

845

3,100

3,945

Misc. income (pins, books)

50

90

295

385

Interest income

125

29

29

Total Income

26,875

8,145

16,062

24,207

Expenses

Membership (incl. Directory)

50

24

24

Conference expenses

12,000

500

4,399

4,899

Executive expenses:

Meeting costs & telephone

500

102

102

Executive travel

1,000

112

112

International liaison travel

2,000

0

Bulletin

350

104

325

429

Indexer

6,000

7,278

7,278

Website and mail lists

3,000

1,536

1,536

Operating expenses:

Office supplies

50

28

28

Postage & delivery

50

37

37

Bank charges

150

17

17

PayPal fees

750

381

381

Regional groups

400

25

492

517

Volunteers, honours & awards

500

0

Outside services

300

229

229

Translation

1,000

167

792

959

Promotion

250

150

111

261

Miscellaneous expenses

50

Total expenses

28,400

963

15,846

16,809

Income less expenses

-1,525

7,182

216

7,398

I am proposing the following budget for the April 1, 2016, to March 31, 2017, fiscal year:

2016–17 Budget

Income

Membership fees

12,000

Conference revenue

10,200

Find an Indexer fees

3,200

Misc. income (pins, books)

100

Interest income

40

Total Income

25,540

Expenses

Membership (incl. Directory)

50

Conference expenses

10,200

Executive expenses

Meeting costs – telephone

300

Executive travel

1,000

International liaison travel

2,000

Bulletin

600

Indexer

7,600

Website and listservs

3,000

Operating expenses

Office supplies

50

Postage – delivery

50

Bank charges

100

PayPal fees

400

Regional groups

Volunteers, honours – awards

4,000

Outside services

0

Translation

1,000

Promotion

200

Miscellaneous expenses

50

Total expenses

31,000

Income less expenses

-5,460

Conference revenue and expenses are based on the number of participants. To date, the number of Canadian registrations for the 2016 joint conference is 17. Assuming the current exchange rate, I estimate an average contribution of $600 from each participant.

I have increased the Indexer subscription rate by 5% in comparison with actual spending during the previous fiscal year. I have also added $4,000 for honours and awards; this year we distributed financial assistance to four members who applied for subsidies to attend the conference. Other numbers reflect actual spending during the previous fiscal year.

At this point I am flexible about adjustments that may increase spending, since we have a surplus of cash in our accounts.

Sergey Lobachev

Executive Reports

Membership Report

As of June 25, 2016, we have 103 members. Three new members have joined since February and 19 members did not renew in December 2015. Two institutional members from Québec did not renew, because of budget cuts.

Membership Types

Individual

97

Listed

64

Basic

27

Student

3

Emeritus

2

Institutional

7

British Columbia

1

Alberta

1

Ontario

3

USA

2

Within Canada

97

British Columbia

26

Alberta

6

Saskatchewan

1

Manitoba

2

Ontario

50

Quebec

9

New Brunswick

1

Prince Edward Island

1

Nova Scotia

1

Outside Canada

6

United States

5

Latvia

1

New Members

The following members have joined since the previous report:

Jason Begy, Montréal, QC

Keith Scott, Montréal, QC

Christina MacDougall, Burlington, ON

Frances Robinson

Executive Reports

Web Administrator's Report

There have been two major developments with the website since the last report. First, there was a problem with how PayPal was connecting to our website, which meant that a couple of new members were unable to process their payments. Gillian Watts helped to identify the problem and David Hathaway resolved it by making the needed adjustments to our website. We also took the opportunity to update the administration for our PayPal account, as it was still using details from the person who originally set it up.

The second development is ongoing. Mary Newberry, Sergey Lobachev, and I had a Skype meeting on May 7 with Riley Haas, a client of Mary's, who is starting to freelance in search engine optimization (SEO) support. We all agreed that it was a very informative meeting, that Riley had some very practical and useful advice to share, and that there are some changes to the website that we should probably make. Riley provided us with a list of his services, should we want to hire him.

I was supposed to draw up a draft proposal on how to proceed with SEO, and Mary, Sergey, and I were going to discuss it and then bring it to the executive. I have been swamped with work in the past few weeks, however, and haven't had time to write the proposal. I still hope to write this in the next few weeks, but don't know if it will be in time for the Chicago executive meeting.

The members' password for 2016 was also finally changed, in April. The lateness was due to my oversight, and I now have that item firmly marked in my calendar for next year.

Stephen Ullstrom

Executive Reports

Bulletin Editor's Report

I'm having so much fun working on the Bulletin. InDesign makes the layout a breeze and the EPUB versions are getting easier to put together. But mostly it's the people I get to interact with, the “Bulletin board” team and the contributors.

All versions of the 21-page Spring issue (vol. 38, no. 1) were available on March 20, 2016, and cost $134 to produce. Two e-book versions—Kindle (MOBI) and reflowable (EPUB)—were created. There was no pressing need to produce a fixed-layout version, as it mimics the PDF with no added value.

I am still looking for proofreaders for the EPUBs. There is no method for gauging the uptake on the EPUB version, so member feedback is appreciated.

I have solicited MACREX, SKY Index, CINDEX, IndexConvert, and IXMLembedder to advertise in the Bulletin. Though potential advertisers certainly know of ISC/SCI, many are not really familiar with the Bulletin.

Last, I would again like to thank the Bulletin board—Gillian Watts, François Trahan, and Sylvia Siemens—for their invaluable help in putting the newsletter together.

Andrea Hatley

Executive Reports — Regions

Eastern Canada

We have had a flurry of activity in the Eastern region since February!

In April I was able to gather folks for a meeting in Montréal. Three new members, existing members, and non-members from Montréal, as well as one member from Ontario (a second was snowed out!), attended. We talked about conferences, web pages (groan), email addresses, time-tracking software, cold calls, and more. I believe it was instructive for all of us. I was particularly grateful that Christine Jacobs was able to come; we certainly enjoyed listening to her answer questions from the newbies.

Noeline Bridge and I also met in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, in April, and I am grateful (as always) to have had that opportunity.

In May we had another grand meeting—indexers from the Maritimes (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and PEI) met in Moncton. The three of us (one from each province) enjoyed a nice long afternoon of chat about indexing.

In the next few months I hope to help the newbies in Montréal get settled into a study group, and also to meet with Noeline again.

Alex Peace

Executive Reports — Regions

Central Canada

Four meetings were held in Toronto:

February 20: Centre for Social Innovation annex, 12 attendees

Pierre Joyal and I demonstrated Barry Campbell's IndexConvert (http://indexbase.co.uk/IndexConvert.html), a Microsoft Word macro that helps convert an index from a normal or word processor file to a form that can be imported into an indexing program (CINDEX, SKY Index, MACREX), a spreadsheet, or a database. It automates many of the most complex processes. We had some difficulties with it, but the software has had a couple updates since that time.

March 12: Toronto Reference Library, 15 attendees

This month's theme was “amazing indexing stories,” where we discussed good indexes, bad indexes, and strange indexes. Folks brought in samples of indexes that they liked or hated or that had simply mystified them.

April 9: Toronto Reference Library, 10 attendees

Time for another review of indexing newsletters. Paula Butler gave an overview of The Indexer; Barbara Kamienski, ASI Keywords; Ronnie Seagren, the ANZSI newsletter; Gillian Watts, SIdelights; and Vanessa Wells, our own Bulletin. Janet Perlman's “Indexing Tactics & Tidbits” was discussed, as it has now been developed into a book. Andrea Hatley Skyped in. The idea of having a GoToMeeting online meeting that could include other regions was brought up.

May 21: Toronto Reference Library, 17 attendees

This month's theme was clients and rates. Sergey Lobachev Skyped in from Amsterdam and spoke about growing your indexing business and how to keep focused. Ruth Pincoe delivered “How Not to Go Broke as a Freelance Indexer/Editor,” which she had delivered at a meeting 10 years ago but needed very little updating! Newbies asked questions of our seasoned indexers. Andrea Hatley Skyped in.

Siusan Moffat

Executive Reports — Regions

Prairies and Northern Canada

We held our nearly regular get-together in Edmonton in February, but this time only three of us were able to make it. No doubt all of us appreciate the value of stepping away from the computer for a few hours in the afternoon for a chance to engage in conversation, commiseration, and camaraderie with our colleagues. Our next get-together is planned for June 25, again in Edmonton.

As regional rep, I met with a person who was referred to me by her friend in the ASI. She was interested in learning more about indexing to see whether this was a direction she should pursue after early retirement. We talked for hours (it was a delightful conversation), but it was within the first hour that she realized indexing was not for her, mainly because of the learning curve. It reminded me again of how useful we can be when we help people discover things they do not want to do.

JoAnne Burek

Executive Reports — Regions

British Columbia

It has been fairly quiet on Vancouver Island since the February executive meeting, but I have had an interesting time learning how to index while out in the woods.

I'm in the process of setting up a meeting on the mainland for later in the summer. Now that I have an idea of meeting locations and costs, I can start drumming up interest among the BC members—though it will probably be mostly Vancouver and surrounding area members because of ferry costs and the like. For me, setting up these meetings is a learning experience each time.

Wishing I could be at the conference. I'm planning to attend the executive meeting via Skype.

Elena Gwynne

Upcoming Meetings, Events, and Webinars

August 2016

Summer hiatus.

September 2016

A meeting is tentatively scheduled for ISC/SCI Prairies and Northern Canada in Edmonton. Contact JoAnne Burek for more information.

A meeting is tentatively scheduled for ISC/SCI Central Canada in Toronto. Contact Siusan Moffat for more information.

An ISC/SCI Eastern Canada meeting is a twinkle in Alex’s eye for the last week of September in Montréal. Contact Alexandra Peace for more information.

October 2016

Nothing yet!

Join, Renew, Write, Advertise

Join

Membership categories and fees (Canadian dollars):

Basic

Individual

100

Student*

65

Institution

115

With Listing

Individual

150

Student*

115

Institution

155

*Student membership is available for full-time students only. Please inform ISC/SCI of your course name and institution.

Visit http://indexers.ca/become-a-member/

Renew

To renew online, go to the following link:

http://indexers.ca/contact-us/renew-your-membership/

Or send your renewal to:

Frances Robinson, Membership Secretary

ISC/SCI

133 Major Street

Toronto, ON

Canada M5S 2K9

Remember to add the ISC/SCI membership secretary to your list of people to contact when your details change.

Write

Submit unsolicited articles electronically in Word or rich text format (*.rtf). Artwork should be in PDF format, and photographs in TIFF or JPG format. Send submissions to Editor, Andrea Hatley, andrea@wordtapestries.com with “Bulletin” in subject line.

Advertise

Advertisement Size

Cost/Issue (C$)

For 3 issues

Whole page

100

90

Half page

75

65

Quarter page

35

30

Business card

25

20

Please contact the Bulletin editor for details.

Bulletin Board: Gillian Watts, François Trahan, Sylvia Siemens, Andrea Hatley.

© 2016 Indexing Society of Canada :: Société canadienne d’indexation and individual contributors.

The Bulletin is published three times per year in print format, and starting with Vol. 37-3, in EPUB (Beta). Both formats are available as for download from www.indexers.ca.

ISC Executive

Indexing Society of Canada :: Société canadienne d’indexation

ISC/SCI

133 Major Street

Toronto, ON

Canada M5S 2K9

http://www.indexers.ca

ISC Executive :: Officiers de la SCI

President :: Présidente

Margaret de Boer

Vice-president :: Vice-président

François Trahan

Past president :: Présidente sortante

Mary Newberry

Treasurer :: Trésorièr

Sergey Lobachev

Membership secretary :: Secrétaire d’adhésions

Frances Robinson

International liaison :: Liaison internationale

Heather Ebbs

Member-at-large :: membre du conseil

John Barkwell

Editor, ISC/SCI Bulletin :: Réviseuse, Bulletin de la SCI

Andrea Hatley

Website administrator :: Gestionnaire du site Web

Stephen Ullstrom

Regional representatives :: Représentantes des regions

British Columbia :: Colombie-Britannique

Elena Gwynne

Prairies and Northern Canada :: Prairies et nord du Canada

JoAnne Burek

Central Canada :: Centre du Canada

Siusan Moffat

Eastern Canada :: Est du Canada

Alexandra Peace

Summer Cocktail Recipies

QUEBEC
Red Sangria

2 oranges, thinly sliced
1 lemon, thinly sliced
1 lime, thinly sliced
4 cups fresh firm fruits, prepared and sliced
1 gallon full-bodied dry red wine
1 1/2 to 2 cups orange liqueur
1 1/2 cups Presidente brandy
2 bunches lemon verbena, washed and stemmed
Fresh soft fruits, sliced as appropriate
Club soda, champagne, or sparkling wine

Combine citrus slices and other firm fruits in a large, nonreactive container. Add wine, liqueur, brandy, and lemon verbena. Cover and refrigerate overnight (or up to three days). When ready to serve, put some soft fruits into each wine glass and fill two-thirds full with the Sangria. Top off with a splash of club soda.

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NEW BRUNSWICK
New Brunswick

1 oz Rye, Rittenhouse 100
2 oz Grapefruit juice (pink)
1 bsp Simple syrup
1 bsp Lemon juice
1 oz Lillet Rouge (as float)
2 ds Grapefruit bitters (as float)

Shake, strain over rocks in a highball, top with fortified wine and bitters.

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PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND
Blueberry Cocktail

1 oz vodka
1/3 cranberry juice
1/3 sparkling water
1/3 orange juice
1 oz Pure Blueberry Puree

Pour all ingredients over ice. Enjoy!

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NOVA SCOTIA
Cranberry Whiskey Sour

1 ½ ounces of whiskey
1 oz of lemon juice
½ oz of simple syrup
½ tablespoon of cranberry sauce
top off with cranberry juice
1 cup of ice

Fill a shaker with 1 cup of ice, whiskey, lemon juice, simple syrup, and cranberry sauce. Shake mixture until it is mixed and chilled. Add to serving glass. Top off with cranberry juice and garnish with cranberries and a sprig of mint.

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NEWFOUNDLAND and LABRADOR
Screech Storm

2 oz Screech (any variety)
Ice
Ginger beer
2 lime slices

Pour Screech into highball glass full of ice. Fill with ginger beer. Squeeze in a lime slice and garnish with another slice.

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CENTRAL CANADA

Maple Manhattan

2 oz Alberta Premium Dark Horse Whisky
5 oz Maple Syrup
Fee Brothers Cherry Bitters

In a mixing glass filled with ice, add
the whisky, maple syrup, and two dashes
of bitters. Stir for one minute and strain
intoa rocks glass with a few large ice
cubes. Garnish with a cinnamon stick
rubbedaround the inside rim of the glass
three to four times and then dropped in.

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ALBERTA
Cowtown Fashioned

2 oz Alberta Premium “Dark Horse” Canadian Rye Whisky
½ oz Mace & Nutmeg Syrup (see below)
2 dashes Bittered Sling Plum & Rootbeer Bitters

Stir all ingredients gently with ice for 10 to 15 seconds. Strain into an old fashioned glass with a large ice cube, and garnish with a lemon cheek.

Mace & Nutmeg Syrup (makes 1 L)
600 g white sugar
600 g water
10 g nutmeg, toasted and crushed
10 g mace, toasted

Toast spices in a medium saucepan until you can smell them (about two minutes). Remove from heat, crush them with a mortar and pestle. Meanwhile, bring the sugar and water to a low simmer. Add the mace and nutmeg, remove from heat. Allow to steep for 12 hours at room temperature. Strain the spices out and bottle in a clean, sanitized container. Refrigerate for seven to 10 days.

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SASKATCHEWAN
Saskatchewan Sunrise

1 oz Lucky Bastard Distillers Lucky Bastard Vodka
¾ oz Lucky Bastard Distillers Saskatoon Berry Liqueur
½ oz Lucky Bastard Distillers Seabuckthorn Liqueur
3 oz orange juice
1 can Sprite

Build the first four ingredients in a highball cocktail glass over ice. Top with Sprite and serve.

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MANITOBA
Kiss of the Narcisse

2 oz Crown Royal Deluxe Whisky
2 oz Sour Puss Apple
2 oz cranberry juice

Pour all ingredients into a shaker full of ice and shake. Strain into chilled martini glass, rimmed with cinnamon sugar. Garnish with cocktail umbrella and gummi worms (optional).

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NORTHWEST TERRITORIES
Arctic Martinez

2 oz (60 ml) Arctic Rose Vermouth
1 oz (30 ml) gin
1 tsp (5 ml) Aperol
handful of ice cubes

Pour all ingredients, except ice and garnish, into a mixing glass. Add ice and stir until chilled. Strain through a julep strainer into a chilled coupe glass. Garnish with rose petal.

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YUKON
Old Sourtoe

1 oz (minimum) of alcohol
1 dehydrated toe

Pour alcohol into glass. Slowly lower dehydrated toe into liquid. Swish around to mix flavours. Garnish with courage.

You can drink it fast, you can drink it slow, but your lips have gotta touch the toe.

See also Dawson City Sourtoe Club

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NUNAVUT
Polar Bear on Ice

4 oz glacier ice
1 polar bear ice cube

Melt glacier ice, pour into glass. Carefully lower polar bear ice cube into water. Enjoy!

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BRITISH COLUMBIA

Avocado Gimlet

¼ average sized fresh avocado
1 tsp sugar
45 ml olive and rosemary gin
15 ml Apfelkorn schnapps
30 ml fresh lime juice
15 ml simple syrup

Shake hard without ice.
Then add ice and shake again—very hard.
Fine strain into a chilled coupe.

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Photo Credits

Cover:
Chicago IMG_1424.jpg, courtesy of Anna Olivier

Eastern Canada:
Quebec— Sangria, 5084101513_dfb3496553_b.jpg, by Evan Swigart, is licenced under CC by-NC-SA 2.0–generic.

Prairies and Northern Canada:
Alberta— Cowtown Manhattan, 24662811083_967065d33e_b.jpg, by Tim Sackton, is licenced under CC by-NC-SA 2.0–generic.
Saskatchewan— Saskatchewan Sunrise, 241086102_953e268e93_z.jpg by Benjamin Nussbaum, is licenced under CC by-NC-SA 2.0–generic.
Northwest Territories— Arctic Martinez, 6218088542_93e7d6e752_b.jpg, by Didriks, is licenced under CC by-NC-SA 2.0–generic.
Yukon— Whisky Sourtoe, Whisky_tasting_glass.jpg, by Master of Malt, is licenced under CC by-NC-SA 2.0–generic. 4378493962_14245c9675.jpg by Mariska Richters, is licenced under CC by-NC-SA 2.0–generic and and has been slightly modified by cropping and removing background.
Nunavut— Img_3717s-bear.jpg, courtesy of "monos" (ice cube mold manufacturer) and Atsuhiro Hayashi (photographer).

Sources for summer cocktail recipes include:
http://www.theloop.ca/7-canadian-inspired-cocktails-you-need-to-try-now/
http://www.kindredcocktails.com/cocktail/new-brunswick
http://peiberries.com/pure-blueberries-vodka-cocktail/
http://screechrum.com/
http://eatnorth.com/eat-north/lucky-bastards-saskatchewan-sunrise-cocktail