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	New England Chapter American Society for Indexing Past Events

Spring 2007 Meeting Summary

March 24, 2007
Chelmsford, Massachusetts

The 2007 annual spring meeting of the New England Chapter of the American Society for Indexing was held once again at the Chelmsford Public Library in Chelmsford, MA, on Saturday, March 24. We had a group of more than 30 people from as far away as Connecticut, New York, Maine, and even one person from Washington State! Three presenters spoke about different areas of non-book indexing, and lunchtime gave the opportunity for informal roundtable discussions related to non-book, and back- of-book indexing. In the following days, links to presentation summaries will be added.

The Unbearable "Aboutness" of Periodical and Database Indexing
Presented by Linda Dunn
Linda's presentation explored periodical and database indexing, and how they differ from book indexing. Topics included the mysteries of the "aboutness" of articles, the rule of four or more, outside authority files, development of thesauri and subject hierarchies, and index-specific subject priorities.

Indexing Local History Materials
Presented by Marilyn Rowland
Marilyn discussed a recent project for the Whelan Memorial Library in West Barnstable, MA, involving creating multiple and combined indexes of historical newspaper clippings, historical house surveys, short articles, photographs, and related materials.

Indexing for an Audience: Where You'll Find New Opportunities
Presented by Lynda Moulton
As the audience for electronic content of all types continues to balloon, e-commerce and intranets in organizations struggle to find quality professionals with a practical and focused approach to creating quality navigation frameworks. New searching technologies leverage taxonomy, thesaurus, and indexed metadata to give searchers better retrieval options. The diversity of technologies requires a variety of approaches for structuring content; indexers are well trained to bring their competencies into implementation teams. Lynda spoke about the demand for people with the right skills and about opportunities in the New England area.