8416 Elko Drive
Ellicott City, MD 21043
410/480-0997
Beginning with a broad liberal arts education that included music theory, the sciences, political science, and art history, Deborah Patton has since 1994 indexed more than 800 books and annual and semi-annual volumes of scientific and medical journals. She has also indexed poster abstracts for scientific or medical society conferences. Publishers tend to use her services more than once.
Deborah knows the publishing process and its various standards, style guides, deadlines, and submission formats. She and indexer Pilar Wyman developed and presented a workshop on Indexing Style Guides to the American Medical Writers Association and to the annual conference of the American Society for Indexing. Publishers tend to use her services more than once.
Since conventions evolve over time, Deborah stays current by participating in professional workshops and conferences.
The author is the subject expert. You'll be hiring an indexing expert. Although an author will naturally be concerned that the index will contain the subjects covered in the book, the author need not do anything to ensure this. That's the indexer's job. Deborah will read the entire book and consider each section of each page to determine what needs to be included. In short, it's unnecessary to supply a list of terms to be included: she will find them.
She subscribes to and has written on various topics for Key Words (Bulletin of the American Society for Indexing). She participates in Internet forums where indexing is discussed by an international group of indexers and to others about how to use the latest software to achieve the results our clients require, and subscribes to and reads The Indexer, the international journal produced by the Society of Indexers in the United Kingdom.
Active in professional organizations, she has served the Mid- and South-Atlantic Chapter of the American Society for Indexing (MSA/ASI) more than once as treasurer, vice chair, and chair. She served as chair of the ASI/H.W. Wilson Award committee to honor excellence in indexing for indexes published in 2005. She also served as a judge of that same committee for indexes published in 2004 and 2006. Currently she is treasurer of the Gardening/Environmental Studies Special Interest Group of the American Society for Indexing.