| Information, Technical Writing, Knowledge, and Power | | BIBA | 3-18 | |
| Mattio Valentino | |||
| In this paper Valentino reproduces and discusses Marin County Resolution 97-20 (protesting NASA's launch of the Cassini spacecraft on which 72 pounds of plutonium were used to generate power) and NASA's informal and formal responses to that resolution (in which they summarize the technical arguments for Cassini's safety). His rhetorical analysis of these documents concludes that those "fluent in the privileged discourse of science" have disproportionate influence on public policy, even when health threats are involved. Three open commentaries accompany Valentino's article. In the first, Gregory Clark argues that "it is not the authority of knowledge" that dominates public policy, but rather "the authority of expertise," which comes primarily from institutional affiliation (19-21). In the second, Regina Lundgren contends that "their use of technical and bureaucratic language" often actually isolates scientists from power and from influence over democratic decision making (22-24). In the third, Larry Shuman shows by using public documents that the facts of the Marin/Cassini safety dispute fail to support the analysis that Valentino offers (25-27). | |||
| Technical Writing and the Authority of Expertise | | BIBA | 19-21 | |
| Gregory Clark | |||
| In the first of three commentaries on Valentino, Gregory Clark argues that
"it is not the authority of knowledge" that dominates public policy, but rather
"the authority of expertise," which comes primarily from institutional
affiliation (19-21). Note: [commentary] | |||
| Balance of Power | | BIBA | 22-24 | |
| Regina Lundgren | |||
| In the second of three commentaries on Valentino, Regina Lundgren contends
that "their use of technical and bureaucratic language" often actually isolates
scientists from power and from influence over democratic decision making
(22-24). Note: [commentary] | |||
| Commentary on a Case Study of NASA's Cassini Project | | BIBA | 25-27 | |
| Larry Shuman; Gerald Kayten | |||
| In the third of three commentaries on Valentino, Larry Shuman and Gerald
Kayten show by using public documents that the facts of the Marin/Cassini
safety dispute fail to support the analysis that Valentino offers (25-27). Note: [commentary] | |||
| Home Sweet Home? Where Do Technical Communication Departments Belong | | BIBA | 28-34 | |
| Nina Wishbow | |||
| Wishbow takes up the influential but often neglected problem of where
technical communication departments should best be located within the structure
of large corporations or agencies. She systematically compares six different
ways to place technical communicators in an organization, explicitly listing
the varied strengths and weaknesses of each alternative and drawing out their
social, political, and financial consequences. Note: [awareness essay] | |||
| Looking Backward, Looking Forward | | BIBA | 35-36 | |
| Kathy Haramundanis | |||
| Notes from the SIGDOC chair. Note: [news] | |||
| Supporting Learners as Users | | BIBA | 3-13 | |
| Mark Guzdial | |||
| Guzdial points out the demanding hierarchy of educational goals that confront students whenever they "are in the position of being users of unmodified software like that used by professionals in their field, while they are still learning the [basic] knowledge of professionals in the field" (7). He then explains two fairly inexpensive scaffolding techniques that have helped compensate for these demands in his classes: (1) sharing a case library with each case "presented at multiple levels of detail," and (2) starting a collaborative web site where students exchange problem-solving examples. Both techniques improved student motivation as well as information. Three open commentaries immediately follow Guzdial's paper. In the first, Andrea diSessa argues for a more revolutionary "literacy model," in which students learn "one very rich piece of software, a computational medium, and reuse that skill again and again over many years in multiple contexts" (14-18). In the second, Stephen Draper notes that because most software users resemble Guzdial's educational learners in trying to do real work while learning new tools, his example-based and learner-created documentation techniques could have wide applicability (19-24). In the third commentary, Hans van der Meij scrutinizes Guzdial's own assumptions and web-site features, and contends that the alleged benefits of student collaboration deserve more careful study (25-31). All three commentators place their remarks in the larger context of constructivism and "minimal manuals." | |||
| How Should Students Learn? | | BIBA | 14-18 | |
| Andrea DiSessa | |||
| In the first of three commentaries on Guzdial, Andrea diSessa argues for a
more revolutionary "literacy model," in which students learn "one very rich
piece of software, a computational medium, and reuse that skill again and again
over many years in multiple contexts." Note: [commentary] | |||
| Supporting Use, Learning, and Education | | BIBA | 19-24 | |
| Stephen Draper | |||
| In the second of three commentaries on Guzdial, Stephen Draper notes that
because most software users resemble Guzdial's educational learners in trying
to do real work while learning new tools, his example-based and learner-created
documentation techniques could have wide applicability. Note: [commentary] | |||
| Supporting the Reader as User | | BIBA | 25-31 | |
| Hans Van der Meij | |||
| In the third of three commentaries on Guzdial, Hans van der Meij scrutinizes
Guzdial's own assumptions and web-site features, and contends that the alleged
benefits of student collaboration deserve more careful study. Note: [commentary] | |||
| Fifteen Ways of Looking at Minimalism | | BIBA | 34-47 | |
| James Dubinsky | |||
| In this first of two related, extended book commentaries on John Carroll's
Minimalism Beyond the Nurnberg Funnel, Dubinsky systematically surveys and
compares the 15 contributions to this anthology on computer documentation
theory. All the essays either clarify minimalist design principles or
critically explore how well minimalism deals with current documentation
challenges. The commentary ends with a retrospective personal interview with
John Carroll, highlighting his own hindsight views on minimalism's development
and likely future. Note: [book commentary] | |||
| The Proven and Potential Promises of Minimalism for Technical Communicators | | BIBA | 48-56 | |
| Eric Lodor | |||
| In this second of two related, extended book commentaries on John Carroll's
Minimalism Beyond the Nurnberg Funnel, Lodor focuses on minimalist
documentation design from the practitioner's perspective. His comments probe
especially those chapters that debate whether minimalism is applicable to
complex domains, to the needs of expert users, and to corporate publishing
environments where cost dominates quality (or at least usability) as a
documentation priority. Note: [book commentary] | |||
| The Engineer as Technical Writer and Document Designer | | BIBA | 57-61 | |
| C. Hugh Marsh | |||
| As corporate downsizing shrinks the professional editorial staffs available
to support many engineering departments, working engineers are increasingly
expected to handle their own technical writing and document design. Marsh tells
how UC Santa Barbara's engineering program has responded to this trend by
increasing its required writing courses, and how those engineering writing
courses are structured to meet changing student needs. Note: [awareness essay] | |||
| SIGDOC 1999 Program Preview | | BIBA | 62-63 | |
| Stuart Selber | |||
| Planned features and highlights of the SIGDOC 1999 conference. Note: [news] | |||
| Introduction to this Classic Reprint and Commentaries | | BIBA | 2-3 | |
| Bob Waite | |||
| Waite explains why the STOP report was selected as a JCD classic reprint and
the stance each of four commentators takes in retrospectively assessing its
significance. Note: [introduction] | |||
| Sequential Thematic Organization of Publications (STOP) | | BIBA | 4-68 | |
| J. R. Tracey; D. E. Rugh; W. S. Starkey | |||
| The Sequential Thematic Organization of Publications (STOP) is an
influential, controversial, highly structured method for planning and then
producing multi-author technical reports (especially proposals) that was
developed at Hughes Aircraft in the 1960s. This classic reprint reproduces
(with permission) the entire original STOP analysis (long out of print),
including the explanatory diagrams, followed by four contemporary commentaries
that discuss its impact over the last 30 years. Author Wendel Starkey also
offers his own look back at STOP's significance (102-103). Note: [classic reprint] | |||
| STOP: Light on the History of Outlining | | BIBA | 69-78 | |
| Jonathan Price | |||
| By providing a detailed and thoroughly referenced review of the history of
outlining, Price argues that "the STOP team took outlining as far as they could
on paper" (76), and they even anticipated recent developments in flexible,
electronic outlining. STOP criticizes static, classificatory outlines in favor
of active, thematic outlines (presented as storyboards), thus promoting the
view (favored by Price) that revisable outlining can be a key feature of
persuasive collaborative writing. Note: [commentary] | |||
| Anticipations of Hypertext: STOP and the Literary Machine | | BIBA | 79-86 | |
| Mark Bernstein | |||
| "In addressing document engineering needs of the 1960s," contends Bernstein,
"STOP anticipates the [hypertext] documentation controversies of the 1990s"
(79), including debates about the importance of information modularity, the
value of "explicit hierarchical structure and persuasive navigational cues"
(81), and the role of images in technical text. But STOP overlooked the impact
of both audience diversity and reader participation in interpreting complex
publications. Note: [commentary] | |||
| Two Approaches to Modularity: Comparing the STOP Approach with Structured Writing | | BIBA | 87-95 | |
| Robert Horn | |||
| Both STOP and information mapping's "structured writing" reject unmodular
prose composition as ineffective. But Horn looks below the surface to find many
underlying differences: where STOP is broadly formulaic, structured writing
invokes detailed content analysis, instructional design techniques, an
elaborate scheme for creating variable-sized modules, and similarly complex
rules for text-graphics integration. Note: [commentary] | |||
| Bits, Atoms, and the Technical Writer: The Rhetoric of STOP | | BIBA | 96-101 | |
| Edmond H. Weiss | |||
| Weiss, for whom STOP's proposal-design technique "was the only important
innovation in technical communication since Aristotle," complains here that
"the assertive rhetoric of STOP -- in which authors took complete
responsibility for the actual physical form of their message -- is yielding to
a passive or neutral rhetoric in which writers create resources and the
readers/receivers extract and shape the message to suit their preferences"
(96). Note: [commentary] | |||
| Author's Response to Commentaries | | BIBA | 102-103 | |
| Wendel S. Starkey | |||
| Original STOP co-author Starkey notes in retrospect how important STOP was
in managing multi-author projects and in giving editors a key role in guiding
proposal structure. Note: [introduction] | |||
| SIGDOC99 Program, Travel, and Registration News | | BIBA | 104-108 | |
| Johndan Johnson-Eilola | |||
| Program summary and registration details for the annual conference. Note: [news] | |||
| Winograd, Terry. (1999)Documentation, Interaction, and Conversation | | BIBA | 3-7 | |
| From the perspective of an artificial intelligence researcher now acquainted with digital libraries, Winograd argues that documentation, however well executed, is never an end in itself but always just a means to user performance, "a part of getting something done that they care about." He compares documentation use with other user "conversations" (with software and other people) to contend that "there is no boundary at which the interface stops and the documentation begins" (5). Hence an awareness of "how people actually work in living situations" (7) is crucial for good documentation design. Two open commentaries immediately follow Winograd's paper. In the first, Whitney Quesenbery (8-11) elaborates on the holistic, integrative role of documentation (which Winograd admits near the end of his paper). Writers are often the only staff members who see a whole product from the user's perspective, and their insight into user mental models should have influence earlier in the design process. In the second commentary, Dennis Wixon (12-14) examines Winograd's examples again and finds that in designing both documentation and product interfaces the best goal is to match user needs in diversity as well as in grain size. | |||
| Documentation's Holistic Role | | BIBA | 8-11 | |
| Whitney Quesenbery | |||
| In the first of two commentaries on Winograd, Whitney Quesenbery elaborates
on the holistic, integrative role of documentation (which Winograd admits near
the end of his paper). Writers are often the only staff members who see a whole
product from the user's perspective, and their insight into user mental models
should have influence earlier in the design process. Note: [commentary] | |||
| Rethinking Documentation and Interface: Reflections on Categorical Approaches | | BIBA | 12-14 | |
| Dennis Wixon | |||
| In the second of two commentaries on Winograd, Dennis Wixon examines
Winograd's examples again and finds that in designing both documentation and
product interfaces the best goal is to match user needs in diversity as well as
in grain size. Note: [commentary] | |||
| Assisting the Virtual User | | BIBA | 15-21 | |
| John Ober | |||
| With examples drawn from the web interface to the California Digital
Library, Ober argues in this awareness essay that a gentle return to some of
the goals of earlier artificial intelligence projects could build flexible user
assistance into otherwise confusing software interfaces. "Confusion
recognizers" that deploy help "just in time" to overcome barriers, and
"pedagogically aware" features that educate uses as well as merely rescue them,
are two promising (though seldom seen) examples of such adaptive online
assistance. Note: [awareness essay] | |||
| Expanding English Studies to Include Workplace Writing | | BIBA | 23-26 | |
| M. Ann Brady | |||
| In this first of three related, extended book commentaries on Garay and
Berhnardt's Expanding Literacies, Brady summarizes many of the essays in this
anthology on teaching technical writing in high schools and community colleges.
She then expresses her concern that "what the collection does not offer is
resistance to conventional notions of teachers serving industry uncritically,
reviewing and revising their pedagogy without asking for what purpose..." Note: [book commentary] | |||
| (Ex)panding (Lit)eracies: Taking English Out of Bounds | | BIBA | 27-29 | |
| Evelyn Johnson | |||
| In this second of three related, extended book commentaries on Garay and
Berhnardt's Expanding Literacies, Johnson acknowledges that "the authors manage
to make the case that English instruction must include literacies that students
will use in their work lives." But she urges curricular reform that still
leaves students with a "wide-angle lens on the world and a critique in their
hearts," and that leaves teachers victorious in any corporate "power plays
within the community of the school." Note: [book commentary] | |||
| Worries About the New Literacies | | BIBA | 30-34 | |
| Dale Sullivan | |||
| In this third of three related, extended book commentaries on Garay and
Berhnardt's Expanding Literacies, Sullivan as "critic of technological society"
debates with Sullivan as "practical rhetorician" about whether this book's
advice is healthy or unhealthy for schools and their students. Reluctant to
give up the usual humanistic emphasis in writing classes, he nevertheless
recognizes that "contextualized writing in real world situations" is just what
he himself advocated during his days directing a "writing across the
curriculum" university program. Note: [book commentary] | |||
| The HCI Bibliography and SIGDOC | | BIBA | 36 | |
| Gary Perlman | |||
| The URL, description, and coverage policy of a web site that unifies most of
the HCI literature. Note: [news] | |||
| IPCC/SIGDOC 2000 Call for Papers | | BIBA | 37-38 | |
| Susan B. Jones | |||
| How to contribute to the joint IPCC/SIGDOC international conference at
Cambridge, MA, in September, 2000. Note: [news] | |||