The programme for the Association of Southern African indexers and Bibliographers (ASAIB) Conference is now available. Registrations may be made on the programme form.
ASI Virtual Conference, 2 May 2020
American Society for Indexing 2020 Virtual Conference ‘Working Smarter to Stay Ahead’, Saturday, May 2.
This meeting will be held virtually via Zoom.
John Simkin Medal postponed until 2021
ANZSI Council has decided that the John Simkin Medal will not be offered in 2020. Instead, the process has been postponed and a new call for nominations will be issued in 2021.
This decision has been taken because of the COVID-19 emergency and the social isolation measures in force in all Australian states and territories and New Zealand. The postponement will reduce risk to ANZSI officers and our Judging Panel (risk associated with handling, packaging, distribution and redistribution of publications) and contribute to ‘flattening the curve’ in the growth of COVID-19 infections.
ANZSI Accreditation scheme temporarily suspended
Due to the COVID-19 emergency and the social isolation measures in force in all Australian states and territories and New Zealand, the ANZSI Accreditation scheme for members is temporarily suspended. In circumstances where essential journeys outside the home are to be limited to work, medical appointments, or food and pharmacy shopping, ANZSI Council does not consider the handling, distribution and re-distribution of publications for assessment to be essential activity. The Accreditation scheme will restart at an appropriate time later this year, and all members will be notified via email and/or the Newsletter. ANZSI members who wish to know more about the scheme in order to apply at a later date should consult the Accreditation page.
National Indexing Day – South Australian Indexers
ANZSI SA members celebrate National Indexing Day in the company of old colonists at the State Library of South Australia
ANZSI SA members L to R John Liddle, Jane Oliver (Convenor), Janet Wilkinson, Judy Richter, Silvia Muscardin in front of one of the Old Colonists mosaics and indexes at the State Library of South Australia.
In 1872 businessman Emanuel Solomon commissioned photographer Henry Jones to create ‘The Old Colonists Banquet Group’ of men. It commemorates a free banquet Solomon held at the Adelaide Town Hall on 28 December 1871 for fellow colonists ‘who date their arrival before 1841’.
Jones also began a mosaic of women, partly as a consolation to those who applied for tickets only to be told that the banquet was for ‘the Male Sex’. The ‘Group of Old Colonists’ women took Jones nine years to complete, and has since been celebrated as unique in the history of Australian photography.
These mosaics are two of several held by the State Library of South Australia and were accompanied by scant and error ridden indexes, especially the index to the women’s portraits. Over a number of years State Library staff have laboriously researched what they could of the arrival and life details of these 1,100+ faces and collected the data in spreadsheets. Metadata Coordinator and ANZSI member, Janet Wilkinson was tasked to convert the data captured in the spreadsheets into MARC catalogue records and later into finding grids (or indexes) that are now on display next to facsimiles of the mosaics on level one of the Spence Wing of the State Library of South Australia.
View the old colonists in more detail in the State Library’s catalogue: The men — the women.