Professional ethics
Your Indexers Available entry allows you to advertise your skills across a range of materials and formats, subject specialties and additional services offered. It also allows you to provide evidence of those skills with details of your qualifications and recent publications you have indexed. While ANZSI takes no responsibility for the accuracy of members’ entries, the Society expects that its members will not include false or misleading information about their skills, expertise, qualifications or experience.
Skills and expertise
To increase your chances of gaining work that is within your range of expertise, and in obtaining further work from your existing clients, it is vital that the information you provide accurately reflects your current skills and expertise.
Contact information
When a user goes to Indexers Available, they are presented with a list of advertisers consisting of vignettes in random order. Each vignette contains your picture if you provided one, your name, and electronic contact details such as email and social media.
This information is carried across from the membership information you supplied when joining the Society. You can amend or expand it at any time.
If you wish your picture to appear in the vignette and your profile page, upload it here. Otherwise we will supply a random illustration. The ‘Name’ is the one you wish to appear in listings and on your profile, so amend it if it is different from the name that appears in on your membership details.
Business name: Your business name appears on your profile, and is searchable in both the Simple Search and the Advanced Search. Your business logo can be uploaded as an image, and is displayed on your profile.
Social media: As well as your email address and website, list here the URLs for your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles as well as your Twitter username. These links are displayed in the listings vignettes and at the top of your profile.
Background and qualifications
Information provided here can be accessed from the Simple Search page or the Simple Search box on the Advanced Search page.
Background: List relevant experience, e.g. working in a specialised field, or the number of years you have worked as a full-time freelance indexer.
Qualifications: In the field provided, you should include tertiary qualifications and training courses, especially indexing training.
Note that, wherever possible, your qualifications and experience should support your claims to specific subject specialities. For example, if you have an arts degree but want to claim expertise in a specialised area such as medicine, it might be wise to point to any experience you have that would support your claim to such expertise.
Specific skills: List any specific skills relevant to a free text search, such as: specific subject specialties, materials and formats, industry types, and additional services. Be aware that the broad subject categories, materials and formats, publishing categories and additional services selected in the next section are not available for free text searching, so consider repeating relevant terms here.
Indexing experience
Unless otherwise stated, information provided here can only be accessed from the dropdown boxes in the Advanced Search page. It cannot be accessed from the Simple Search page or the Simple Search box on the Advanced Search page, so it is important to consider adding terms from the dropdown box to the ‘Specific Skills’ area of the previous section.
Accredited: This information is supplied centrally. If you have Accreditation but do not appear as Accredited here, contact the Membership Secretary.
Broad subject categories: Select from the subject categories those areas supported by your qualifications, knowledge, experience, interests and competence, such as indexing several works in the subject, indexing works at a tertiary level, or as a result of tertiary study. Refer to the subject guide in the sidebar for help with choosing categories.
Materials and formats: Select from the list materials and formats with which you have either demonstrated competence, or are reasonably confident that you will be able manage efficiently within a commercial timeframe.
Publishing categories: Select from the list the areas in which you have worked. It is not necessary to have indexed in these areas; for example, you may have carried out editing work for a trade publisher, or manuscript assessment for a scholarly press.
Software skills: List the proprietary names of any software in which you have skills relevant to information management or publication, such as programs for indexing, word processing, desktop publishing, e-books, database management, thesaurus construction, bibliographies, website construction/management. These program names are searchable from the Simple Search page or the Simple Search box on the Advanced Search page.
Languages other than English: List any languages in which you possess sufficient skill to construct a professional index. These language names are searchable from the Simple Search page or the Simple Search box on the Advanced Search page.
Additional services: When selecting additional services, only choose those for which you have relevant qualifications and/or experience.
Recent publications indexed: List here the titles of recently indexed publications. All information provided here is searchable from the Simple Search page or the Advanced Search page. Although there is no restriction on the number of titles you can list, bear the following in mind:
- The operative word here is ‘recent’. For someone returning after a break from indexing, it may be a good idea to include an explanatory statement along those lines, e.g. “After a five-year break, whilst I ….., I have now returned to freelance indexing”. This could be particularly useful if you have spent time developing specific subject knowledge in a particular occupation.
- Full and correct citation of the publication. One of the reasons for listing your recently indexed publications is so that potential clients can locate and review your work. You should assist this process by providing full and correct citation details using a recognised citation style. The preferred style for IA is: author, date, title, edition (if not the first), publisher, place of publication. If the index is available for inspection on a public website (such as the “Look Inside” feature on the Amazon website), add the appropriate link (or send it to the Webmaster to add for you). If you wish to mount the index on your own website and link to it, ensure that you are not infringing the publisher’s copyright before you do so — some contracts may assign copyright to the publisher.
- Do not include a publication unless you have checked the page proofs of the index or the published index. Errors may be introduced into an index after it is submitted to the publisher, and these will detract from the quality of your work in the eyes of a potential client. For example, typesetting errors can create havoc with the filing order (e.g. subheadings appearing as main headings). While you know the errors in the published index were not your fault, that may not be obvious to a potential client.
- Strategic use of space. You may choose to demonstrate either your depth of expertise within a particular subject area, or the breadth of expertise across a range of subject areas.
- Alternatively, you may use this space to promote the fact that you have received awards for particular indexes.
- Beginning Indexers with no published indexes: If you do not yet have any published indexes then you could use the available space to explain why. For example, a beginning indexer could state that they are a beginning indexer keen to take on work.