about KEB Indexing

I am a professionally trained indexer with a long history of providing clear, comprehensive, highly usable indexes on time or early. I am professional, flexible, and pleasant to work with. I work to your specifications, with or without a style guide, or if you prefer, I can determine the author’s goals, the intended audience, the appropriate format, structure, and length of the index, and the depth of indexing required.

Because I have a broad knowledge base and am widely read, I have been able to create highly usable indexes in a wide range of subjects. I assimilate new information quickly, and I am adept at incorporating multiple perspectives into an index when necessary. I am scrupulously attentive to detail, and I have strong analytical and organizational abilities. I have excellent communication skills, and I am a terminology expert. 

Because the index is an interface between the author and the reader, I base each indexing decision on the author’s intentions and the readers’ needs. In crafting an index, I understand that it is vital for me to see the relationships between details and organize them into meaningful order. I feel it is vital that an index use the author’s words and possess a level of detail that helps readers find the information they need easily and quickly. As I compile an index, I am building a well-interconnected roadmap to the text, one that involves the judicious use of double posting and cross-references and clear, utilitarian entry wording.

My education and training include an M.A. and a B.A. in English, completion of the U.S. Department of Agriculture series of courses on indexing, the UC Berkeley classes Indexing: Theory and Application and Embedded Indexing and Indexing of E-Books, and courses from the National Federation of Abstracting and Information Services and the Society for Technical Communication. To keep my knowledge and resources up-to-date, I enhance my professional training by regularly attending local and national workshops and seminars on indexing. I belong to the American Society of Indexers (ASI) and the ASI’s history and archaeology and scholarly indexing special interest groups, Editorial Freelancers Association, the Bay Area Editors’ Forum, and Freelancers Union.

I’ve been indexing for more than twenty years, and I have compiled hundreds of indexes; thus I’ve had the opportunity to index works in a wide range of subject areas, including the following: the humanities, the social sciences, literary theory, communication studies, cookbooks, medicine, popular science, classical literature, history, public health, self-help, how-to, psychology, economics, mathematics, political science, sociology, religious studies, critical thinking, logic, education, linguistics, the behavioral sciences, biography, language instruction, anthropology, and the life sciences.

My clients include publishers, packagers, and individual authors.