Advanced/Intermediate Seminar
IASC/SCAD Conference
3 June 2004

Below are documents related to the pre-conference seminar "Indexing Challenges, Multiple Solutions at the Indexing and Abstracting Society of Canada / Société canadienne pour l'analyse de documents 2004 Conference and AGM in Calgary, AB .

The Text

During the seminar, participants compared a variety of solutions to difficult indexing issues presented in Indecent and internationally illegal: The death penalty against child offenders by Amnesty International.

The Assignment

A PDF version of the assignment is posted here.

The Indexes

Full text of all indexes submitted by seminar participants are available below as PDF files.

Index One Index Two Index Three Index Four Index Six Index Seven Index Eight

Index Nine Index Ten Index Eleven Index Twelve Index Thirteen Index Fourteen

Index Five (This index is for a text other than the one we used in this seminar, but I've posted it here just FYI.)

The Comparisons

The handout on which specific issues is compared are available here as a PDF file.

The Questions

I've compiled a list of the questions you asked as readers, and have posted them here as a Word document.

The Discussion

During the session, many topics came up that we examined in the indexes. Below is a partial list of those issues (I've excluded topics that are covered on the comparisons handout).

• statistics, rates, facts, case studies
• static/changing/evolving standards of decency, trends
• frequency of use in states in which it's allowed (it's rare in some)
• The text lumps national organizations, religions, and opinion polls into one section. Indexers didn't. They all felt it was a "miscellaneous" section.
• goals of punishment, retribution, peneological goals, deterrence
• "modern era"

Some of the interesting stylistic and structural issues we discussed are listed below:

• What did the indexer identify as metatopics?
• How did indexers deal with italicized text?
• How did indexers deal with bulleted lists?
• How did indexers treat quotes from rulings, both dissenters and majority opinions?
• How is indexer's terminology related to structure of index? Are the related or intertwined?
• What were some opportunities for gathering that indexers noticed? That they missed?
• How do definitions of audience/reader groups impact terminology and structure?

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