Herr's Indexing Service

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Herr's Indexing Service was established in 1944, by my mother Betty Herr (Hallinger). Betty learned to index while working as an editorial assistant in the medical department of the J. B. Lippincott Publishing Company in Philadelphia. After completing several indexes there, she decided to try it on her own, with the help of contacts she had established with other publishing companies in Philadelphia and New York City. Indexing in those pre-computer days meant that there were hundreds or even thousands of cards or slips of paper to file, and eventually retype, for each index. This lead to my first job and introduction to indexing, filing those slips in alphabetical order. My pay rate for this was 1 for each inch of the stack that I filed. In the 1960s, our family took a trip across the country in our station wagon. In addition to our suitcases of clothes we took my mother's portable office a big electric typewriter, the pages of her current project, and shoe boxes of slips. In 1976, my husband and I and my mother purchased some property in Vermont, and we built our homes next door to each other. At this point I joined Betty in the indexing business on a full-time basis. Our mother-daughter collaboration continued for nearly 30 years. Betty retired from indexing after 62 years, in 2006. I am now running the business as a sole proprietor.

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