The foundation of the Society of Indexers

摘要

In 1956 G. Norman Knight (1891–1978), a freelance indexer of 30 years standing, knew of no-one else in thatline of work. He had taken up indexing as a part-time activity in 1925, in addition to working as a civil servantand writing innumerable letters, articles and books on freemasonry and chess. He placed an advertisement inthe Times Literary Supplement on 28 December requesting anyone who was interested in forming a society forindexers to write to him. He received several dozen replies and then hosted ‘several discreet luncheons’ at theCivil Service Club, of which he was a member, to sound out some of those who had replied with a view toproviding an initial complement of officers for the Society. The Society of Indexers (SI) was formally inauguratedat 10.30 a.m. on Saturday 30 March 1957, eighty years after Henry Benjamin Wheatley had founded the firstprofessional association of indexers, the Index Society. The Index Society had merged with the British RecordSociety a few years later and a representative of this society was amongst the sixty-five people present at SI’sinaugural meeting, as well as representatives of Aslib and the Library Association. One of the foundermembers, Professor William Hechscher, even flew in from Utrecht expressly for this event.