Society of Indexers

01/09/2025

What makes a good book indexer? Our blog post explains what you need to work in this fascinating and varied job. Indexers come from all sorts of professional backgrounds and many work part-time alongside other jobs https://buff.ly/JscbmCf

29/08/2025

Need an indexer for your non-fiction book? Our Professional Directory can be filtered by subject and type of publication to find the right indexer for your project https://buff.ly/VfJe4lI

21/08/2025

At our SI Coffee Morning today 13 indexers met to talk about things we've learned over our indexing careers.

First, we talked about how we'd found indexing and how we knew it was the right fit. An enthusiasm for organisation and sorting things out is common to indexers, as is a keenness to help people find information. Some of us were looking for part-time work and/or work we could specifically do from home, which was much less common before the 2020s. Others had identified indexing as a good second career to take us into retirement. And some of us wanted to escape office politics by becoming self-employed freelancers.

Reflecting on whether we'd still go down the indexing path now, we generally agreed that we would, although issues with freelancing - managing money and workflow - and the impact of changes to the publishing sector, especially outsourcing, were things that might be deterrents. Managing technological change could also be challenging, with a split in the group about the attractions of embedded indexing.

Everyone agreed on the benefits of knowing other indexers and being able to draw on the expertise and support of colleagues through Society membership, and on the pleasures of indexing as a career: you get paid to read books, to enjoy the intellectual challenges of indexing, and if you ever get a boring project, it will be over in a couple of weeks.

Thanks as ever to Ruth Martin for hosting, and facilitating a stimulating discussion. Read more about indexing as a career on our website:

Indexing offers the flexibility of working from home. For many it is part of a portfolio career encompassing other paid employment or freelance activities such as editorial work, or provides a means of income which fits round other commitments. If you are looking for an interesting, satisfying and i...

18/08/2025

Last chance to book for The Heart and Mind of Indexing, 19-21 September, at The Writers’ Suite, Edgbaston Park Hotel and Conference Centre, Birmingham, UK. Booking closes today, Monday 18 August - ensure your place at via buff.ly/8tvslBl

11/08/2025

One week left to book for The Heart and Mind of Indexing, 19-21 September, at The Writers’ Suite, Edgbaston Park Hotel and Conference Centre, Birmingham, UK. Wherever you are in your indexing career, improve your skills, learn new things, meet your fellow indexers. Book your place at via https://buff.ly/8tvslBl

07/08/2025

There's still time to book your place at our annual conference. In person, in Birmingham UK from Friday 19 to Sunday 21 September 2025. Plenary sessions on indexing parliamentary papers, humour and bias in indexing, a roundtable on indexing the same text, and (of course) AI. Breakout sessions on indexing software, larger projects and long series, indexing literary criticism and emotions, client communication and when to break the rules. Find out more and book online at

The Society of Indexers 2025 conference will be an in-person residential conference at Edgbaston Park Hotel and Conference Centre at the University of Birmingham from Friday 19 September to Sunday 21 September 2025. The theme of this year’s conference is ‘The Heart and Mind of Indexing’, inspi...

06/08/2025

Twenty-one SI members, from students to Fellows, gathered online this morning for our monthly Talking about the Past online meeting. Today's topic was passing mentions, a perennial problem in indexers. How do we decide what to leave out, and what to include?

Members discussed how we weigh up the context of the whole book, the needs of the reader - including the returning reader - and the intention of the author when deciding whether a mention might be passing. There's significant ethical responsibility in making sure a book is properly represented in the index, and it relies not only on analysis and precision but also empathy and intuition. It can seem more generous to include as much as possible, but you risk a cluttered index - cutting the clutter can make the book more accessible.

Some of us are kitchen-sink indexers, adding everything and cutting back at the end; others prefer to be selective from the start. We talked about systems for flagging potential passing mentions - most indexing software facilitates this - so we can identify entries that might need review. Criteria to apply include relation to the metatopic and the amount of coverage in the text, and these can be adjusted in relation to the space available for the index.

Indexing examples, and material in tables, was also discussed. Examples are often not indexed, but they may have specific, relevant information that is useful to index. Tables may be routinely indexed in some types of text - if that's the only place a drug is mentioned in a medical textbook, it will be indexed - but others may be more like examples and not necessarily indexable.

Thanks as usual to Ann Hudson for leading our discussion and to all who participated. For more on passing mentions, see our SI blog post:

One of the most frequent queries indexers get from clients is “Why is this term not in the index?” In this post, indexer Tanya Izzard explains what passing mentions are, why we sometimes leave them out, and how we make that decision. Definitions Passing mentions (sometimes called passing referen...

04/08/2025

Become a book indexer. Read books, write indexes, get an intellectual workout, work flexibly from home, get paid. Find out more about our indexing training course https://buff.ly/CIK0U16

01/08/2025

Friday is often the day when clients and editors are looking for the right book indexer for their project. Use our professional directory to find expert professional book indexers and start a great working relationship https://buff.ly/N5YBs1N

29/07/2025

Thousands of non-fiction books are published every year; we can’t index them all! Help us out by joining the Society of Indexers. Our training course will prepare you for a stimulating career in book indexing. Find out more at https://buff.ly/CIK0U16

28/07/2025

Don't miss your chance to attend our 2025 Conference, The Heart and Mind of Indexing, 19-21 September, at The Writers’ Suite, Edgbaston Park Hotel and Conference Centre, Birmingham, UK. Our excellent programme of sessions and social events offers something for indexers at all stages of their careers. Book your place at via https://buff.ly/agRO01Q

24/07/2025

How do you find the right book indexer for your book? Use our Professional Directory and you'll find an indexer with the right expertise and experience for your project https://buff.ly/pxxfSO4