This is the fifth in a series of blog postings on the American Society for Indexing’s (ASI) Virtual Conference, held on Saturday, May 2nd. The Annual Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina was postponed until 2021 because of COVID-19.
Held on Zoom, the fifth session, Before You Say Yes (Or No), presented by Anne Fifer, focused on how to evaluate an indexing project before accepting–or declining. To evaluate a potential project, she suggested asking questions about the client, the client’s indexing expectations, and questions about the text.
Questions about the client:
- How did the client find you?
- What does the client know about the indexing process?
- Will the client treat you like a professional?
- Will there be respect for personal boundaries?
Questions about the client’s indexing expectations:
- Is this an embedded indexing, standard back-of-the-book, or e-book indexing project?
- Expectations for length or granularity of the index.
- Project style, layout, and typography requirements.
- What is the turnaround time? When will the manuscript be available for indexing?
Questions about the text:
- How structured is the text?
- Evaluate the topic and level of subject. Is the topic in your comfort zone?
- How will the quality of writing affect the indexing process?
- Determine what needs to be indexed. Are there special elements, for example: illustrations, tables, footnotes or endnotes, or appendices?
- Evaluate several chapters from the middle of the book to assess the quality of the writing and the organization of the book.
I will discuss the sixth session of the Virtual Conference in the next blog posting. For more information about the services provided by the author of this blog, see the Stellar Searches LLC website, http://www.stellarsearches.com