Indexing & Word Services, an Announcement
On abstracting, indexing, and beating the new business blues.
Officially an Abstracter
In early November 2022, I was contacted by a librarian from the DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs, NCJRS Virtual Library.
From November through January, I went through an interview process and some paperwork, and in early January, I was officially — and happily — contracted to be a part-time abstracter for the NCJRS Virtual Library, which has over 230,000 documents. (Even though I was hired in January, there was still more paperwork and other onboarding tasks to complete, hence the delayed announcement here.)
The idea is that abstracts provide a quick way for virtual library users to determine whether or not they want to invest the time in reading the complete document.
Indexing & Abstracting: Tools that Facilitate Information Access
In the Information Access field, indexing and abstracting are more alike than they at first appear:
The purpose of abstracting is to provide a brief and objective overview of a document — be it a book, a memo, or a report, etc. — in which the abstracter will describe the content and scope of the document. These abstracts should give readers enough information so that they can determine whether or not they want to read the whole document.
Side note: there are informative abstracts & there are indicative (aka descriptive) abstracts. An informative abstract contains important statements or facts reported in a document, including findings, conclusions and recommendations, while an indicative abstract describes the general content of the document (i.e., it indicates what the document is about without repeating the information).
The purpose of indexing is to provide a map or guide to the document at hand — be it a book, a memo, or a report, etc. — in which the indexer will identify main points and topics that are discussed and create a logical listing of those themes that readers can easily refer to and quickly find what they are looking for in the text itself.
Both indexing and abstracting require document-subject analysis and identification of main ideas and themes.
Both tasks involve determining what information will be useful to readers: in indexing, what does the author talk about, what are the key concepts, and what will the reader want to look for in the text; and in abstracting, what does the author talk about, what are the key concepts or research results, and what will the reader be interested in reading about.
New Business Blues Are Real
Every indexer I’ve spoken with tends to agree that it takes a couple of years to build a client base to where one can fully support oneself with book-indexing income. Most indexers did suggest that they initially had part-time jobs or a spouse to help with the costs of living.
With this new part-time abstracting job, I am able to continue my focus on indexing — if you recall my list of books I indexed in 2022, it confirms that it does take some time to build a client base. This contract also gives me the opportunity to abstract documents, something I’ve missed since leaving the National Security Archive…although these are definitely a different kind of document than those at the Archive, the principle is the same.
Basically, I have been very fortunate with this abstracting job since it is very much in my field of expertise, complements the indexing work I do, and falls within the “word services” aspect of VFJ Indexing & Word Services.