The American Society for Indexing held its 2021 Virtual Conference, “Get Your Indexing Shot in the Arm,” on Friday, April 30, 2021 and Saturday, May 1, 2021. Three sessions were held virtually on Zoom each day.
In the second session on Friday, Peter Rooney and Julia Rooney presented in Socratic-question style, Peter’s work of indexing the Mueller Report. This is the Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election.
He emphasized the importance of the document and shared his frustration that this historic work did not have an index. He covered the importance of avoiding bias, and the efficiency of using the table of contents for structure, the use of the metatopic, and the glossary for guidance. He discussed the difficulty of indexing redacted sections of the manuscript. Unique categories in the index included events, actions, legal concepts, court cases, and quotes.
The presentation then compared commissioned work with independent work, which is Julia’s area of expertise. She also discussed publishing the index, including venues and formats for the index. A website was created for the index, http://www.MuellerReportIndex.net. Outreach was implemented, including email and mailing campaigns, along with press/media. The index has also been published in print format as a pocket booklet and folio, with possible alternative formats.
In the next blog posting I will discuss the third Friday session of the ASI 2021 Virtual Conference. For more information about the services provided by the author of this blog, see the Stellar Searches LLC website, http://www.stellarsearches.com.