[Sigia-l] Certification

[Fred Leise]

I find it interesting that the issue of certification is coming up here. 
The American Society of Indexers (people who do back-of-book and other 
kinds of indexing) has been debating the issue of certification for 
nearly 20 years, and I don't think they are even close to a resolution. 
Some of the questions raised during ASI discussions include (in no 
particular order):

1. Why do I need certification since I've been indexing for 25 years and 
my clients already know the quality of work I produce? Do we 
automatically grandfather in successful indexers with a certain number 
of years of experience? Does length of time indexing have anything to do 
with the quality of indexes produced?
2. Does certification imply a certain level of quality? If so, how is 
that level of quality determined?
3. The context for every index is different. Does certification imply 
that the indexer can always do a good job?
4. Why should publishers care if an indexer is certified or not?
5. Is the society itself liable if a certified indexer does a bad job 
and causes actual harm (say the bad index to a medical text that 
prevented a doctor from finding relevant information)?  (I know that's a 
stretch, but remember, in this country we sue for anything.)
6. What gives ASI the right to certify indexers any way.
7. Who will prepare certification materials?
8. Will our certification process itself need to be certified?
9. How much will it cost us to run? (Dick Hill already provided one 
answer to that.)
10. Do we certify only members? If so, what happens when someone decides 
to drop their membership? How do we police their continuing use of the 
certification?
11. What kind of continuing education is necessary?
12. How do we test that someone is up to the standards necessary for 
certification?
13. What do people need to do to retain certification?
14. Who will be judging the certification qualifications? How did they 
get to do that anyway?
15. How do we deal with indexing specialties? Do we say that indexer A 
is certified only to index medical texts, but not philosophical treatises?

So, yes, I agree with Karl Fast that the question of certification is 
complicated. As a point of reference, ASI is 40 years old this year, so 
that issue has been discussed for fully half of the organization's lifetime.

Fred

Fred Leise
Vice President, Methodology and Product Strategy
Intuitect
fred.leise at intuitect.com
o: 303.247.9000
c: 773.791.2849