Course on establishing your freelance #indexing business: scope of your services, rates, work–life balance, marketing/branding, and more!
Apr 6-May 3
Designed for indexers, the principles are easily adapted for #editors.
#IndexSky #edibuddies #amediting
libraryjuiceacademy.com/shop/course/...
A PowerPoint title slide with the background of a bluish grey tinted photo of curved shelves filled with books. Indexers and information professionals: crossovers and co-operation Paula Clarke Bain CILIP MDG 2026 #MetaFutures conference Society of Indexers logo
A brunette woman in a bookprint dress presenting at a lectern with a display screen behind. It shows a PowerPoint slide with a photo of the first index page from The Frankfurt Kabuff Critical Edition (eds Beth Driscoll and Claire Squires; index by Paula Clarke Bain). Slide text reads: Value of indexes/human indexers • Indexes save the reader time and hassle • Access to information within book • Computer search is not the same – a computer doesn't read like a human, and so it can't index like one • Al problems – 'spicy autocomplete’ • Deep, thoughtful reading Society of Indexers logo Indexers and information professionals Paula Clarke Bain @baindex.org CILIP MDG #MetaFutures 2026
A conference name badge on top of a colourful bookshelf print dress. Paula Clarke Bain Society of Indexers #MetaFutures Conference 11–13 March 2026 Engineers' House, Bristol MDG Metadata & Discovery Group logo
Selfie of a windswept-looking woman in a grey woolly hat and black and brown checked coat in front of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Clifton Suspension Bridge across the Avon Gorge in Bristol, UK.
A great day at @cilipmdg.bsky.social’s #MetaFutures conference. Enjoyed presenting on crossovers between @cilip.bsky.social and @indexers.bsky.social, plus all the talks, side chats, and pub quiz (even the ‘MARC Maths’ round). Thank you for having me and hope the rest goes well. #IndexSky
Good thread here of my talk to @cilipmdg.bsky.social’s #MetaFutures conference on links between @cilip.bsky.social and @indexers.bsky.social. I also got all to try indexing a page from @djbduncan.bsky.social’s INDEX, A History of the. (Thanks @emmabooth.bsky.social for ace live posting!) #IndexSky
A twist on the disappointing lack of an index: teasing the reader with the prospect of an index, but not delivering #IndexSky
Hotel mirror selfie of a smiling brunette woman in a purple and green bookshelf print dress.
A conference room lectern and screen showing a title slide: CILIP: the library and information association CILIP MDG Conference 2026: #Metafutures 11–13th March Engineers' House, Bristol
Registered and ready for
@cilipmdg.bsky.social’s #MetaFutures conference day 1. Book frock as standard for such events. Presenting from that lectern later on the crossovers between the work of @cilip.bsky.social and @indexers.bsky.social members. #IndexSky
View from a train window of white clouds and green fields and trees with the ridge of the Malvern Hills in the distance.
Indexer on the latest of many trains in March 2026. Off to Clifton in Bristol for the @cilipmdg.bsky.social #MetaFutures conference, where I’m presenting tomorrow on the links between the work of @cilip.bsky.social and @indexers.bsky.social. Nice to see the Malvern Hills again on the way. #IndexSky
Great to see some new index users getting started! Indexing books for children is a specific skill - see buff.ly/SgdRGrZ for more information on this fascinating area of work #IndexSky
Caveat: we don't constantly test LLMs on indexing tasks, but have checked with various models every six months. It could be another AI revolution or it could just be that indexing is uniquely human.
🥸
#IndexSky
What about AI in indexing? So far, LLM indexing is *by far* the worst product of AI we've come across. There appears to be something uniquely slippery about indexing that LLMs have not been able to learn. Even a brute-force index formed from a table of contents is magnitudes better.
#IndexSky
Indexing books is difficult and not something the Project Q team had done much of before. So we turned to a couple of great books: new-wave "Book Indexing" by Stephen Ullstrom and old-school "Indexing, the Art Of" by G. Norman Knight.
Love them both.
@stephenullstrom.bsky.social
#IndexSky
Promotional graphic with black-and-white speaker headshot photo on a purple background image of Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol. I'm speaking at CILIP MDG CONFERENCE 2026 Indexers and information professionals: crossovers and co-operation Paula Clarke Bain Chair and Fellow, Society of Indexers #METAFUTURES | 11-13 MARCH 2026 | ENGINEERS' HOUSE, BRISTOL MDG Metadata & Discovery Group logo
Glad to be speaking at the CILIP MDG #MetaFutures conference in Bristol next week on ‘Indexers and information professionals: crossovers and co-operation’ and links between @cilipmdg.bsky.social @cilip.bsky.social and @indexers.bsky.social. Keen to tackle the evening pub quiz too. 🤓 #IndexSky
Happy Monday! FREE online Index-Manager trainings with Katharina Munk this Wed Feb 25 5pm GMT/12pm EST. Learn functions to facilitate indexing, incl. post-processing and quality checks. Click here to register: index-manager.net/en/save-your...
Future trainings: April 29, June 24. Join us! #IndexSky
Great that @livunipress.bsky.social have included @indexer.bsky.social (41, 1, 2023) as a free to read journal issue. Articles cover the joy of reading, indexing excellence, peer reviews, finding your first indexing job, book reviews and conference reports. Lots to enjoy! #IndexSky
buff.ly/YiLKWzB
#Indexing #dailyentries, while looking out over a bright white snow and ice-covered landscape:
snowballs, 380
snowbanking, 380
Happy Indexing, #IndexSky!
A lot of indexers get into this work by trying it out first #IndexSky
I was a university administrator doing a part-time PhD when my partner, then running an indie press, needed a book index. I enjoyed it so much I retrained via the @indexers.bsky.social training course and have been indexing full-time since I completed it. #IndexSky
My origin story: in-house proofreader at publishers/printers ➡️ freelance proofreader and copy-editor ➡️ finding @indexers.bsky.social via @the-ciep.bsky.social, doing the SI Training in Indexing course, and then freelance book indexing becoming my best fit. How about yours? #IndexSky
Are you thinking about indexing as a new career direction in 2026? Is it the right fit for you? In our new Ask the Indexers blog post, our panel share how they came to indexing, and how they knew it was right for them. Current indexers - what's your origin story? #IndexSky
The intriguing prospect of an index combined with motivational challenges... #IndexSky
This was a great session, with some object lessons in good client communication and turning an unlikely project into a winning one. I also enjoyed talking about Charlotte Matter's excellent Feminist Substances, a niche book that took me on many journeys #IndexSky
Another great summary thread here (thanks to @tanyaizzard.bsky.social) of @indexers.bsky.social latest enjoyable Coffee Morning Zoom session and the sort of thing we book indexers talk about when we get together. This time: the oddball indexes. #IndexSky
At yesterday's Zoom Coffee Morning, twenty SI members met to discuss oddball projects – unexpected indexing requirements, niche subject areas, clients with very specific needs – and how we can adapt and adjust our working practices to deal with them. #IndexSky
Good to see you here and elsewhere earlier. Yes, those were very different times on Twitter before X. Quite a few of us active on Bluesky though. Trying to encourage the #IndexSky hashtag for more indexing chat.
Look forward to being part of the @cilipmdg.bsky.social #MetaFutures conference in Bristol this March, talking about connections between the library cataloguers of @cilip.bsky.social and the book indexers of @indexers.bsky.social. #IndexSky
A 2026 reshare of my starter pack of freelance book indexers on Bluesky, including members of @indexers.bsky.social and other indexing societies. It’s opt-in/out by request, so just let me know if you wish to join or leave it. Good to see you all in the #IndexSky.
go.bsky.app/GzqinPu
It’s good to hear of your interest, thanks. Much more information is on the Society of Indexers website and blog, like the career page below. Several of us indexers are on Bluesky for further chats (e.g. see under my Starter Packs tab and the hashtag #IndexSky).
www.indexers.org.uk/about-indexi...
Considering a new career in the new year? Find out more about becoming a book indexer and the skills and attributes required. Then investigate the @indexers.bsky.social training course. It changed my life, for the better. #IndexSky
An example index page shown on the TV show Taskmaster with entries from Dam, Aswan 122 to Drizzle, light 72, 73, 75, 77-78, 118 There is no entry for Davies, Greg
Caught up on Taskmaster Champion of Champions 4 and the prize task index (said to be Little Alex Horne’s book’s betrayal of Greg Davies). Fine work by Andy Zaltzman @zaltzcricket.bsky.social, with much to love for @indexers.bsky.social. 🤓 #IndexSky #Taskmaster @alexhorne.bsky.social @taskmaster.tv
Always good to see this card from Christmas past. Beautiful illustrations by our @indexers.bsky.social colleague Joan Dearnley (and text by me). Greetings, seasonal. #IndexSky
Would willingness to write essays (not outsource to AI) be improved if rhetoric had remained a mainstay of the curriculum? (These are the thoughts I think when indexing multi-volume texts on the history of rhetoric).
But then, I’ve read the letters medieval students wrote home.
#IndexSky
