The China Society for Indexers

A Brief Introduction

The China Society for Indexer (CSI), a nationwide non-profit public organization in the fields of index research and of text compilation, was founded on December 24, 1991 in Shanghai. It runs under the supervision of the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau in Beijing and is affiliated with Fudan University. (The current chairperson of the Society is Professor Liu Chenggong, the deputy Communist Party Secretary of Fudan University.) CSI’s mission and its members’ codes of conduct are based on the ideas of ‘sincerity, truth-seeking, the spirit of exploitation, and professional dedication.’ It aims at promoting index theory research, boosting index compilation and publication, training professional indexers, and enhancing academic exchange at home and abroad.

The Society’s organization includes the Secretariat and several specialized committees each of which is respectively responsible for academic research, compilation and translation publishing, education and training, advertisement and liaison, and a branch committee of database and a Youth council. It currently has more than 1 000 members across the country in the service fields of library and information, academic research, and press and publishing. The Society has planned, compiled, and published a series of books on index research, such as Index: Past, Present, and Future, On Index and the Methods of Index, Indexing Automation, Indexing Techniques and Standard, Newspaper Indexes and News Databases. Since 2003, the Society has published its quarterly journal China Index. CSI holds annual general meeting jointly with academic conference. It makes regular indexing exhibition and index achievement assessment, and it also hosts frequent talks and seminars on indexing. The Society has established and maintained close relations with indexers societies of many countries, including America, Britain, Canada, Australia, and South Africa.

For many years, CSI has been promoting index standardization and database construction in China and has made positive achievements. CSI has organized index experts to create a document of national index standard, Regulations on Index Compilation (General Rules) (GB/T22466-2008), which was officially issued by the Standardization Administration Board of China on November 3, 2008, and put into effect on April 1, 2009. Another drafted national index standard, Guideline for Establishment of Indexes of the local Chronicles, is waiting for officially issued by the Standardization Administration Board of China.

The China Society for Indexers would like to work together with our colleagues all over the world to speed up the index standardization process in China and to contribute to the index services around the world.

For more information, please log onto CSI’s website at：

www.cnindex.fudan.edu.cn