Embedded Indexing

If you want to expand into embedded indexing, but are not quite sure about your own skills, you could opt for a workshop or 1-on-1 tuition from Kevin Broccoli. Kevin is an American indexer who’s been indexing since 1996. He also developed the online course on embedded indexing for UC Berkeley (now no longer available).

Workshops

The workshops have a minimum of 5 participants and are geared toward those who have no experience with embedded indexing. They consist of two four-hours afternoon sessions. If you are interested in doing a workshop, please send an email to the NIN email address and I will try to get 5 persons interested.

  • Skype workshop Embedded Indexing in Word ($235)
  • Skype workshop Embedded Indexing in InDesign & DocBook (XML)  ($235)


1-on-1 Tuition

The 1-on-1 embedded indexing lessons will be 30 minutes long, once per week and you will be assigned embedded indexing tasks to practice during the week. The amount of time needed to do the tasks will vary depending on the student, but will generally be about an hour to two hours’ worth of “homework” per week.

Besides solving the issue of conflicting schedules with other indexers, the benefit of this format over a workshop is, of course, more direct instruction, tailored to your individual needs. For example, you  might be interested learning only one or two of the following:

  1. Word, using WordEmbed or IXMLembedder
  2. Word, just for CUP
  3. InDesign
  4. FrameMaker
  5. DocBook
  6. Specific instruction on an upcoming embedded indexing project that you’ve accepted and a review of the files as you work on them.


Costs

Each half-hour Skype session costs $40. You must sign up for a minimum of one month worth of lessons, for a total cost of $160, which would be paid for in advance. After the month is up, you can chose to continue for additional lessons (booking them in two week pairs).

If you are interested in 1-on-1 tuition, send an email to the NIN email address and I will send you the contact information of Kevin Broccoli.

Linda Haylock’s enthusiastic comments on her experience:

“I spent one thirty-minute session per week over the space of five weeks learning how to produce an embedded index. It was a method of tuition that suited me, and Kevin was ever so good. I still need plenty of practice before feeling confident enough to market myself as an ‘embedded indexer’ but at least now I can practice – before these sessions, I couldn’t even do that without bursting into tears of frustration!”