Ask the Indexers: what’s the thing you wish everyone understood about indexing?
Posted on: 10/07/2026
In our latest Ask the Indexers blog post, our panel members offer insight into the sometimes hidden world of indexing. Samantha Clark, Advanced Professional Member That it is actually a job which people do! Everyone seems to just assume that indexes appear by magic. That it’s not just a case of searching for names, and
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Ask the Indexers: pushing your professional boundaries
Posted on: 25/06/2026
For today’s blog post, we asked our panel of indexers about projects outside their comfort zone – whether in terms of the type of book, type of indexing or subject area – and how they approached this. Kate McIntosh, Advanced Professional Member I have and I like to do it every so often, just because
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Ask the Indexers: continuity and change
Posted on: 21/04/2026
For this blog post, we asked our panel of experienced indexers: since you started indexing, what has changed in the profession and what has stayed the same? Christine Boylan, Advanced Professional Member I came into indexing just as computers were being introduced more widely. I am not really sure I would have taken up the
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What we say when we talk about indexing
Posted on: 31/03/2026
Happy National Indexing Day 2026! Today is all about encouraging people to think about indexes (those incredibly useful things at the back of books and other publications that direct readers to the good stuff), and the people (those incredibly useful things with creative, thinking minds) who write them for a living. So, to gear us
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Ask the Indexers: what do you enjoy most about indexing?
Posted on: 23/02/2026
Our panel of expert indexers tell us what they enjoy most about indexing, and what continues to make it meaningful or rewarding for them. Kate McIntosh, Advanced Professional Member My brain likes lists and order and patterns and indexing satisfies that. Samantha Clark, Advanced Professional Member I enjoy organising information and making it accessible to
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Ask the Indexers: what made you become an indexer?
Posted on: 10/01/2026
In our first Ask the Indexers post of 2026, we ask the indexers: what initially drew you to indexing, and how did you know it was the right fit? Valeria Padalino, Advanced Professional Member I first came across indexing when I read an article by another indexer in the CILIP journal. The piece described the
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The Society of Indexers: benefits of membership
Posted on: 25/11/2025
What can you gain from joining the Society of Indexers? How do we support our members to develop their indexing skills and businesses? In this post, indexer Susan Penny explores the advantages being a member of the Society can provide. Indexers are life’s swans. We create indexes that sail gracefully into the book world, allowing
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What is embedded indexing?
Posted on: 22/10/2025
While most indexes are still compiled from page proofs, some indexes are embedded, where the index entries are added as tags or codes to a manuscript file. In this blog post Tanya Izzard – who actually enjoys embedded indexing – explains how the process works and when clients might need or want to use embedded indexing
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Authors as Indexers
Posted on: 08/10/2025
Should authors index their own books, or is the job best left to professional indexers? In this post, indexer and author David Green explores the pros and cons of self-indexing. Are authors the best people to index their own work? Certainly, they know their subject matter inside out, and they understand the book’s structure and
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Ask the Indexers: indexer self-talk
Posted on: 20/05/2025
What’s the phrase or saying that our panel of experts repeat to themselves over the course of their work? Nic Nicholas, Fellow “Does this entry make sense?” Also “Remember to be consistent”. Marian Aird, Advanced Professional Member Will the reader look for this? Will they find anything useful if they do? Christine Boylan, Advanced Professional
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Ask the Indexers: tables of contents and headings
Posted on: 01/05/2025
Texts can be structured in lots of ways: chapter titles formed into tables of contents, section headings and subheadings, numbered sections or paragraphs. How do indexers use these in their work? Sue Penny, Advanced Professional Member I quite like printing off the contents page so I can tick off each chapter as I finish it,
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The politics of indexing
Posted on: 27/03/2025
Indexers strive for equity and objectivity in their work, but indexes – like all other texts – have political implications. For our National Indexing Day blog, indexer Tanya Izzard looks at how indexing gets political, and how indexers respond to that. I was at a party a few years ago and was explaining what I
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