Human indexers from around the world met online in the digital space of Zoom for this year’s SI Conference. Between 50 and 60 members of SI and our sister societies attended over the two days, which were scheduled to enable participation from different time zones. In this post, Tanya Izzard reports on the main events of the Conference.
Hellos and goodbyes
It was especially good to see a number of student indexers attending this conference. Your first indexing conference as a student can be daunting, but the programme was tailored to allow indexers at all stages of their careers to take part and learn something new.
Sadly, this was the last indexing conference for our Honorary President, Sam Leith. Sam has served for the maximum ten years that our Presidents can, and has been an unfailing champion of indexes and indexers throughout that time. His welcome speech celebrated the ways in which indexers contribute to the world of publishing and the experiences of readers, and how the Society of Indexers has worked to promote the profession and improve its profile. Sam has recently had the experience of having a book of his own indexed: his new book on children’s literature, The Haunted Wood, has an index prepared by a SI member.
The human and the digital: Conference talks
Our first talk on Day 1 addressed AI and its implications. Publishing consultant and AI expert George Walkley gave an excellent introduction to the current use and thinking on AI in the publishing sector. George explained how publishers are looking to AI tools to achieve competitive advantage – but there has to be a good return on investment, and issues such as accuracy and provenance mean human skills of checking and judgement remain vital. George also walked us through the complex position on copyright and AI. I took on the second half of this session; following up on my earlier blog post, I was able to show how AI chatbots perform at indexing tasks. They can be useful for production of lists and summaries, but cannot produce accurate indexes; omissions, errors and inconsistencies mean that anything chatbots produce needs so much scrutiny that they may not save any time. Indexers also need to be confident about their legal and contractual responsibilities to clients before using AI tools.
In our second talk, indexers Pierke Bosschieter and Stephen Ullstrom discussed the current offering in the world of indexing software. We all use this in our daily work, and various options are available. Each package has options and approaches that suit different indexers and projects, and some are now available at no cost. Pierke and Stephen encouraged us to get involved with the ongoing development of our software, feeding back to developers and joining study groups. This has the added benefit of improving our software skills, too.
On Day 2, academics Claire Squires and Beth Driscoll, with indexer Paula Clarke Bain, brought the human quality of play to the fore. Claire and Beth have co-written a novella called The Frankfurt Kabuff , itself a satire of the thriller form and of Frankfurt Book Fair, and then took the playfulness a step further by publishing a critical edition of the novella, with scholarly essays, supplementary material and – naturally – an index. With the enthusiastic support of their publisher, they commissioned a playful yet functional index from Paula. This index was a collaborative effort, drawing on discussions with Claire and Beth as well as other indexers who had taken on similar projects.
Indexer Mary Coe encouraged us to bring human engagement to the digital world by participating in projects to fill the information gaps on indexing and indexers online. Her project, funded by Wikipedia, is designed to improve the information in Wikipedia and Wikidata on indexing, with a team of volunteers identifying gaps and suggesting improvements. Mary showed us around Wikidata, which functions as the index to Wikipedia and its other platforms, and is drawn on by other data sources.
SI members Melanie Gee and Ruth Martin talked us through recent developments in the Society’s SI offer. Firstly, Melanie explained how the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) points offer has been updated, to better reflect indexers’ current activities. Secondly, the process for applying for Advanced Professional status now includes a requirement to have achieved 6 CPD points since accreditation; this has been introduced as a confidence-building stepping stone as Professional SI members move through their careers. Ruth introduced the new SI mentoring scheme, which matches up an indexer who has identified particular development goals with another who has relevant skills or experience, and our new set of Taking the Plunge leaflets, aimed at new professional indexers getting started in their careers.
There was just time for some updates from our sister societies around the world, including news of an online course on developing your own macros from the American Society for Indexing. ASI will also be celebrating its own national indexing day on 18 November this year. Indexing Society of Canada / Société canadienne d’indexation (ISC/SCI) members also confirmed that their Conference 2025 will be an in-person event in Vancouver.
Getting specific: conference discussion groups
As well as some icebreaker chats that allowed us to meet our fellow delegates, find out about their indexing work and their craft projects, and meet their cats, we had breakout discussion groups on each day. Groups focused on client relations, embedded indexing and working on multi-author works; there was a session for students to meet new professional indexers, and a peer review, where the whole group index the same text and compare outcomes. There was space around and after the sessions for some general chat, too, to foster those human connections.
Many thanks to all the presenters, the Conference Committee who put the programme together, and especially to Ruth Ellis and Nicola King for managing the Zoom event. Next year’s conference will be an in-person residential conference at Edgbaston Park Hotel and Conference Centre at the University of Birmingham from Friday 19th September to Sunday 21st September 2025.
About Tanya Izzard
Tanya Izzard indexes scholarly and trade books in the humanities, producing standard and embedded indexes for authors and publishers. She has been indexing full-time since 2017 and is an Advanced Professional Member of SI and the Marketing Director on the SI Executive Board.
