Today, Wednesday 30th March 2022, is National Indexing Day in the UK (#indexday). This is the sixth annual National Indexing Day (NID) and marks the 65th anniversary of the founding of the Society of Indexers in 1957. (My previous blogs on National Indexing Days from the years 2017 to 2021 can be found here: NID 1, NID 2, NID 3, NID 4: ‘Some of the best and funniest index entries I know’, and NID 5: ‘An A to Z of indexing’.)
This year’s event is again taking place online, due to planning difficulties from the obvious reason, and centres on a free online event presented by six indexers, including myself, on different aspects of indexing, including training and building an indexing business, working with academic versus trade publishers, and working with authors and embedded indexes. See more on this event here.
As part of this year’s celebrations, my blog post this time features brief details on 22 indexers (and honorary indexers) for NID 2022, and some of their notable achievements.
Aird, Marian – member of Society of Indexers, and co-presenter of the NID 2022 online event part 1 on training as an indexer and building your business, alongside Martin, Ruth (q.v.).
Bailey, Nancy – indexer of Hansard and The Times and founder of an indexing agency to train women in the profession. (See her new Wikipedia entry here, which I created because she deserved one.)
Bain, Paula Clarke – see me. Joint creator of National Indexing Day in 2017 with Ellis, Ruth (q.v.), and presenter of the NID 2022 online event part 3 on working with authors and embedded indexes, alongside Izzard, Tanya (q.v.). For more on working with authors, see my blog here and Tanya’s blog there.
Bell, Hazel K. – indexer, past editor of The Indexer journal, and author of many excellent books on indexing, including her latest Indexing Biographies (2020).
Booth, Pat F. – indexer and author of Indexing: The Manual of Good Practice (2001), a useful guide but often hard to find.
Bridge, Noeline – indexer and editor of the handbook Indexing Names (2012), one of my most well-thumbed index guides.
Duncan, Dennis – honorary member of the Society of Indexers and author of Index, A History of the (for which I did the index). See my forthcoming blog about this, currently under construction, and Dennis’s TLS article ‘Index, A celebration of the’, published around the first NID, here.
Ellis, Ruth – current internet director of the Society of Indexers, joint creator of National Indexing Day in 2017 (alongside Bain, Paula Clarke, q.v.), and co-presenter of the NID 2022 online event part 2 on academic and trade publishers, alongside King, Nicola (q.v.).
Grosseteste, Robert – inventor of the subject index in thirteenth-century England with his Tabula distinctionum (around 1230).
Hugh of St Cher – inventor of the Bible concordance or word index in thirteenth-century France (also around the year 1230). Not to be confused with Cher of Sonny & Cher, despite what an automated index might tell you.
Izzard, Tanya – current Marketing Director of the Society of Indexers and co-presenter of the NID 2022 online event part 3 on working with authors and embedded indexing, alongside Bain, Paula Clarke (q.v.).
King, Nicola – current chair of the Society of Indexers, and co-presenter of the NID 2022 online event part 2 on academic and trade publishers, alongside Ellis, Ruth (q.v.).
King, William – rogue indexer in the Boyle against Bentley controversy and author of The Transactioneer (1700) satirical index (see more by Duncan, Dennis, q.v.).
Kingdom, Ann – past chair of the Society of Indexers, current member of The Indexer journal editorial board, and host of the NID 2022 online event.
Knight, G. (Gilfred) Norman – founder of the Society of Indexers in 1957 and author of Indexing, The Art of (1979). See his obituary in The Indexer here.
Leith, Sam – honorary president of the Society of Indexers. See his Guardian article about the first National Indexing Day, ‘In our Google era, indexers are the unsung heroes of the publishing world’, here.
Martin, Ruth – member of Society of Indexers, and co-presenter of the NID 2022 online event part 1 on training as an indexer and building your business, alongside Aird, Marian (q.v.).
Mulvany, Nancy – indexer and author of the handbook Indexing Books (2005), another very useful practical guide.
Oldmixon, John – rogue indexer and author of The Index-Writer pamphlet (1729), undermining Laurence Echard’s History of England (see more by Duncan, Dennis, q.v.).
Petherbridge, Mary – English indexer and founder of the Secretarial Bureau in 1895. (See her new Wikipedia entry here, which I created because she also deserved one.)
Stauber, Do Mi – indexer and author of the brilliant indexing guide Facing the Text: Content and Structure in Book Indexing (2004).
Wheatley, Henry B. – founder of the Index Society in 1877 and author of What Is An Index? (1878) and How to Make an Index (1902).
See the Society of Indexers website here for more about indexing, and the hashtag #indexday on social media for more about National Indexing Day 2022.
#indexday, happy!
Paula Clarke Bain is an Advanced Professional Member of the Society of Indexers and the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading. She tweets as @PC_Bain and her website (with comedy book indexes blog) is baindex.org. Find the Society of Indexers on Twitter @indexers and www.indexers.org.uk.
Paula Clarke Bain 
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