Meet a Fellow Heartlander: Margaret Hentz

By Paula McCoy
Spring 2010

Margaret Hentz, the new co-president of the Heartland Chapter, is a longtime member of ASI and the Heartland Chapter. In addition to being an experienced book indexer, she is a profes­sional librarian in the chemical industry. The two jobs complement each other: as a librarian, she helps others find the books and resources they need, and as an indexer, she contributes to the quality of those individual resources by creating well-honed indexes. In her new position as co-president, she looks forward to helping new indexers get started.

Margaret works as an Information Management Leader at the Dow AgroSciences subsidiary of Dow Chemical Co. in Indianapolis, Indiana. Her focus is managing the operation of an internal research report repository containing over 450,000 full-text reports and overseeing the operation of four physical libraries located in Indianapolis, Midland, MI, Springhouse, PA, and Freeport, TX.

Ever since she was little, Margaret loved books and wanted to be a librarian. She used to go to the public library twice a week to check out such books as the Nancy Drew and Cherry Ames collections. She decided to become a corporate librarian, so she obtained her B.S. in Food Science from St. Joseph College in West Hartford, CT, and then received an M.L.S. from the State University of New York in Albany. After graduation, she worked at various corporations including General Foods, Chevron, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Merck & Co., and now Dow AgroSciences. Along the way, she obtained her Doctorate in Information Science from Nova Northeastern University via a computer-based learning program.

Early in her professional library career in 1987, Margaret became interested in freelance back-of-the-book indexing after hearing about a friend who did it full-time. She had already done some indexing of research reports, patents, and journal articles. To learn more about book indexing, she enrolled in the basic indexing course offered by the USDA. After completing the course, Margaret sent letters to various publishers listed in Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory and managed to obtain a couple of publishers as clients. Today she enjoys indexing scientific and technical books, but she also likes college textbooks in history and the social sciences. Although she has a small base of repeat clients, it is enough to keep her busy.  

Margaret joined the local chapter of ASI when she was living in New Jersey, and immediately joined the Heartland Chapter after moving to Indiana in 1998. In addition to attending the programs, Margaret was secretary of the Heartland Chapter for four years.  She enjoys attending the meetings and meeting other indexers who are always enthusiastic and willing to fine-tune their indexing skills. As co-president, she hopes to be able to plan programs that will be both useful and enjoyable to member indexers at all levels of experience.

Margaret is married and has one Morgan horse, two Newfoundland dogs, and a kitty which keep her busy. When she has some free time, she also enjoys bicycling, swimming, gardening, and needlework.    


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