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DRAFT Conference Program
The program includes individual presentations as well as round-table and panel discussions with an emphasis on building practical skills.
The details of sessions listed below may be subject to change
THURSDAY 29 October
8.30 – 8.50am Registration
9.00 – 9.10am Welcome address — Mary Coe, ANZSI Vice President and Conference Co-Chair
9.15 – 9.50am Keynote #1 ‘ The Index as a Closely Read Text’ — Jolanta Komornicka
10.00 – 10.20am Morning Tea
10.25 – 11.10am ‘ANZSI: Past, Present and Future’ — Karen Gillen
11:15 –12:00pm ‘Library and Information Science (LIS) WikiProject’ — Annie Reynolds & Joy Nettleton
12.00 – 12.55pm Lunch (plus ‘Meet and Greet’ for new indexers)
1.00 – 1.45pm Indexing Worldwide: ICRIS and the International Indexers website — Madeleine Davis
1.50 – 3.00pm ‘Getting the Most from your Indexing Software’. Concurrent sessions: Cindex — Frances Lennie, Discussion leader; Sky Index — Sherrey Quinn, Discussion leader
3.00 – 3.20pm Afternoon Tea
3.25 – 4.25pm ‘Indexing Resources’ — Mary Coe & Sherrey Quinn; discussion session
4.30 – 5.00pm ANZSI AGM
—–oo0oo—–
6:00pm Informal Dinner, followed by trivia competition, Thirsty Crow brew/pub, 153 Fitzmaurice Street, Wagga Wagga
FRIDAY 30 October
8.30 – 8.50am Registration
9.00 – 9.45am Keynote #2 ‘ Indexing as an Applied Hermeneutic Framework for Meaning Construction and Interpretive Practice’ — Yazdan Mansourian
10.00 – 10.20am Morning Tea
10.25 – 11.15am ‘Indexing Efficiently’ — Max McMaster
11.15 –12.00pm Special interest groups; small group discussions
12.00 – 12.55pm Lunch
1.00 – 2.35pm ‘Subject Analysis and Term Selection’: Group indexing exercise — Glenda Browne & Jenny Browne
2.40 – 3.05pm Afternoon Tea
3.10 – 3.55pm ‘Indexing Scholarship’ — Panel TBA
4.00 –4.30pm Closing address — Mary Coe, Conference Co-Chair
—–oo0oo—–
6.00pm Conference Dinner – Magpies Nest Restaurant, 30 Pine Gully Road, Wagga Wagga (6pm Canapes on the terrace; 7pm Dinner)
Post-conference Workshops
Saturday 31 October, 9:00am-12:30pm
- Refresher Indexing Workshop Max McMaster (half day)
- Venue: Charles Sturt University Library
The workshop includes morning tea.
For participants who have forgotten some of their basic indexing skills this workshop will cover the essentials. It will also cover some more advanced indexing techniques to enhance their indexing knowledge. This workshop is not suitable for new indexers. Participants will be supplied with an electronic workbook prior to the course, accessible from a secure area on the ANZSI website. They can either download the workbook onto their laptop or print the workbook out. For any queries or further information contact Max McMaster.
Register here or with the Registration link at the top of this page.
Saturday 31 October, 9:00am-12:30pm
- Wagga Wagga Wiki Workshop (half day)
- Venue: Charles Sturt University Library
The Wiki Workshop will be a collaborative event where people work together to write and improve Wikipedia and Wikidata entries.
New wiki editors are advised to attend from the start as training will be presented at the beginning. The event is free but there will be a simple registration process which will be advised in due course. Any enquiries – please contact the ANZSI Secretary.
Speaker Bios and Abstracts
Glenda Browne
Glenda Browne has been a freelance indexer of books, journals, online help and websites since 1988. She has taught indexing-related courses for clients including ANZSI, Macleay College and UNSW. Glenda is co-author of The indexing companion and author of The indexing companion: book indexing. www.webindexing.com.au.
Jenny Browne
Jenny Browne has been indexing books, journals and reports since 2016. She has a BA in linguistics and completed a postgraduate diploma in Information Studies in 2025. Jenny has attended Australian and international conferences and has reported on these for the ANZSI Newsletter and The Indexer. She has also been the ANZSI Communications Officer since 2018.
‘Subject Analysis and Term Selection’ group indexing exercise — Abstract
In this session we will briefly look at the principles of subject analysis and term selection, with participation invited through group discussions. We will then work together to partially index a short document. Participants will receive the URL in advance, and are invited to index the work and submit it for comparison and integration into a group index before the conference. This has been an interesting exercise at past conferences as we see the different approaches that people take.
We will also work in small groups to look at some additional text relating to the topic to see how it can be integrated into the existing index.
If time permits, we will discuss issues including overindexing and underindexing, indexing for unknown users and needs, and the importance (or not) of consistency between indexers.
Madeleine Davis
Madeleine Davis has been a back-of-the-book and loose-leaf indexer with the Australian Society of Indexers (AusSI), later the Australian and New Zealand Society of Indexers (ANZSI), since 1995, specialising in biography and legal indexing. She has, over the years, also ‘morphed’ into a web surfer and Project Officer with AustLII (Australasian Legal Information Institute), an online free-access resource for Australian legal information, in a team responsible for the development and maintenance of indexes to legal materials — legislation, treaties, decisions of courts and tribunals and law journals. She was a lecturer for online legal research in the Faculty of Law, University of Technology Sydney (UTS) from 2001 to 2006. She has also been co-general editor for Thomson Reuters’ Online Currents legal journal from 2008 to 2013. Madeleine is an Accredited Indexer with ANZSI and was ANZSI President from 2017 to 2025. She is currently retired from full-time indexing but has been lured back occasionally to index books too good to resist!
‘Indexing Worldwide: ICRIS and the International Indexers website’ — Abstract
Ever since the foundation of the first indexing society in modern times, the various societies and networks have been in communication with one another. Relationships were formalised in 1999 through an international agreement and terms of reference for the International Committee of Representatives of Indexing Societies (ICRIS), and a regular series of face-to-face ICRIS meetings were held at conferences. Following the COVID-19 pandemic and the advent of online meetings, which further cemented international communication and led to the attendance by all society/network representatives at biannual Zoom meetings, the idea of establishing an international indexing website emerged. This session will describe the establishment of ICRIS and the long gestation period of the new ‘Indexing Around the World’ website, highlighting the way in which ICRIS members contributed ideas, enhancements, additions and amendments that brought the project to fruition in a constructive, collegial way.
Jolanta Komornicka
‘The Index as a Closely Read Text’ — Abstract (Keynote 1)
While we often focus on how to create (or write) indexes, there’s less attention to how to read like an indexer, though we all do it and the various training curricula work hard to instil this fundamental skill. In my keynote, I will explore what it means to read like an indexer using the framework of the technique of close reading. Close reading is foundational to literary studies and is the practice of making an argument based on close attention to a text. Indexers rarely think of their indexes as arguments (though we’re happy to argue about the right way to create them), but at a fundamental level that is what indexes are; they prioritize information, make connections between components, and guide a reader to conclusions (even if that conclusion is “I really need to know what the author has to say about the hamburger theory of indexer economics on page 79”). Beginning with an overview of what close reading is, the mechanics of how it works, I apply the principles and practices of close reading to the creation of an index, using it to explore what it means to first read like an indexer, then how our reading shapes the way we write as indexers.
Yazdan Mansourian
‘Indexing as an Applied Hermeneutic Framework for Meaning Construction and Interpretive Practice’ — Abstract (Keynote 2)
Reading, at its core, is a process of making meaning of a text. In practice, readers do not simply move linearly from the beginning of a text to its end. Instead, they usually read selectively, return to the earlier sections, follow emerging thoughts, and connect ideas to shape their understanding. From a hermeneutic perspective, this non-linear movement reflects the hermeneutic circle where understanding develops through a continual interaction between the parts and the whole of a text, where each intuition shapes and reshapes the reader’s interpretation of the text. Therefore, meaning is not fixed and emerges through a dialogue between the reader and the text, influenced by their prior knowledge, expectations, and the context. In this presentation, I examine the role of indexing within this interpretive process and explain how indexers anticipate the reader’s movement through a hermeneutic circle by clustering related concepts and signalling conceptual relationships. In doing so, they do not simply guide navigation; they actively participate in shaping the conditions under which interpretation evolves. From this perspective, indexing is a practical form of hermeneutics. The indexer identifies what is meaningful, determines levels of significance, and articulates connections across the text. At the same time, the index remains open, does not close the process of meaning construction and creates multiple pathways of meaningful engagement with a text which is the heart of any hermeneutic inquiry.