I’m JoAnne Burek and I’m passionate about books and making the information in them easy to find. I love to help my clients look their best through their written communications, by creating indexes for their books to make them more useful and appealing to readers.
Prior to freelance indexing, I worked for 35 years in the information technology industry as a programmer, internal auditor, business analyst, pricer, proposal writer, and marketer.
Over the years I learned how to be empathetic with clients. As an indexer, I use this skill to put myself in the place of the reader, because a good index is written for the reader’s needs.
My personal obsessions include fine arts, domestic arts, nature, European history, and antiquarian book-collecting. (You can check out my personal library at LibraryThing 
).
For fun, I attended the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology’s Culinary Bootcamps and Artisan Bread-baking. I cook meals from scratch and I bake bread every week. I also hike, garden, knit, sew, volunteer, and travel extensively for food, art, history, and local culture.
When I’m not indexing, I write web copy and websites for business and manage the websites of organizations I belong to. I also blog for my food and travel website.
If you have any questions about my qualifications and experience, please ask me.
Education and Professional Memberships
- Masters in Business Administration, University of Alberta
- Bachelor of Science (First Class Honours), University of Alberta
- Indexing: Theory and Application course, University of California Berkeley
- Member of the Indexing Society of Canada / Société canadienne d’indexation (ISC/SCI), where I’ve been treasurer, communications director, conference planner and presenter, website developer, and web administrator
