ATTWAnnualBibliographies

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 * Survey of ATTW Bibliographies, 1996-2005
 * Submitted by: Miriam Wildeman and Laurie Evans **
 * Context

In the words of its website, "The ATTW (Association of Teachers of Technical Writing) was formed in 1973 to encourage dialogue among teachers of technical communication and to develop technical communication as an academic discipline." The organization has over 1000 members, both in academia and in business/industry, and produces its own academic journal, //Technical Communication Quarterly// (TCQ - [|http://www.leaonline__com/loi/tcq__) which is currently published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (recently acquired by Taylor and Francis).] Since its inception, ATTW has published annual bibliographies of material directly or tangentially relevant to those engaged in or studying the field of technical communication. The bibliography appeared in the fourth issue (winter) of TCQ until 2002-2003, when it moved briefly to the third issue (fall) before switching to an exclusively electronic format in 2005.

Each bibliography has three main divisions (books, articles, and reviews) and ends with a list of journals that were monitored for citations. Articles are subdivided into three major categories: pedagogy, research, and technical communication practice. To date, only print media are included in the bibliographies. The number of journals referenced over the years 1996 through 2005 has, in fact, fallen because many nursing and medical journals that were originally included were later dropped from the list of monitored publications. Locating a complete range of the ATTW bibliography for 1996-2005 was challenging due to changes in publisher, editor and format. An aside: Dr. Southard has made bibliographies for the years 1997 through 2005 available in a folder in the Course Documents section of the BlackBoard 7730 website. We highly suggest that TPC students use these as a starting point for research because titles are not necessarily helpful search terms for these citations. The taxonomy used by the ATTW bibliography will be helpful in the secondary research process. [As bibliographies beyond 2005 are published, they will be added.] ** Bibliographical article headings tend to be fluid over the years we examined with some headings being phased out or subsumed under others. For example, "Computer Issues" was terminated after 2000, probably because its contents fit into other, more specific, headings. Although the subdivisions into teaching, research, and practice seem logical, there is still a certain unavoidable amount of overlap and ambiguity. The editors combat this by cross-referencing with some success, but we feel it would be useful to put the bibliographies in a form searchable by author and topic. Since the bibliography has moved to online distribution this may become a reality. In order to get a sense of the scope of the large number of articles, books and reviews contained in the bibliographies during the ten year span of 1996-2005, we created quantitative tables for books, articles and reviews to chart the occurrence of publications in the various areas identified by the bibliography taxonomies. This approach provided a clear picture of the trends in TPC research and scholarship over the last ten years. The tables that we used for analysis are attached to this document; however, we present (below) a summary of the recent trends in the contents of the ATTW Bibliography (2001-2005). It is important to note that the variety of topics covered in the bibliography, while a strong sample of scholarship in the TPC field, only represents work that was published in the journals reviewed by the editorial board of the ATTW bibliography each year. The editors note the variety changed each year based on the research interests of the editorial board members. Another point to note is that the bibliography moved to online distribution in 2005, eliminating space and economic constraints posed by print media. This may be a causal factor in the proliferation of tangentially related items in the 2005 bibliography. For example, many of the book reviews listed in 2005 are on subjects such as the politics of pregnancy and Chinese art. Book reviews on topics such as these are mingled with a plethora of reviews of how-to books that describe a variety of electronic and communication tasks.
 * Search Strategy **
 * ** Joyner Library's E-Journal Portal ** using EAOnline yielded bibliographies for four years.
 * ** ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) ** database yielded two biographies.
 * ** Google ** proved to be the most efficient way to retrieve the 1997-1998 bibliographies, as they were not included in the online issues of TCQ. We found these on Dr. Thomas Barker?s faculty web page at Texas Tech University. Ironically, we avoided using Google as a reliable source of information for this assignment; however, our last attempt to locate these items using this search engine was successful.
 * ** Email communication ** with the editor of the 2005 ATTW Bibliography proved to be a successful way to obtain this document. ATTW moved to online distribution of the bibliography beginning with the 2005 bibliography. Since our group members are not members of ATTW, we were unable to access the bibliographies through the ATTW website. While tedious, the experience of making contact with two editors of the bibliography gave us insight into the importance of networking in this discipline. Both of the editors we contacted were interested in our ENGL 7730 project and were exceedingly helpful to us. This effort netted a PDF of the 2005 bibliography and an offer of an advance copy of the 2006 compilation which will be posted on the ATTW website in October 2007.
 * Observations
 * ** Year ** || ** Observations, trends, main topics in publications ** ||
 * ** 2001 ** || * Health Communication emerged as independent heading in the article taxonomy
 * Computer Issues was deleted and subsumed by Computers, Desktop & Electronic Publishing, Hypertext, Web Design (research, pedagogy and practice)
 * Collaborative, Group and Organizational Processes Related to Writing (research) articles increased
 * Professional Trends (incl. history of profession) articles increased 800% from previous year
 * Guides, textbooks, how-to?s accounted for 25% (6 books) of all books published in TPC ||
 * ** 2002 ** || * Assessment and other pedagogical-related topic articles began to increase
 * Computers, Desktop & Electronic Publishing, Hypertext, Web Design (research) articles dropped significantly
 * Technology and Culture articles dropped significantly
 * Number books published dropped to 14
 * Guides, textbooks, how-to?s accounted for 7% (1 book) of all books published in TPC ||
 * ** 2003 ** || * Number of Directories published increased; however all of these titles (n=9) appear to be in the how-to or guide book genre
 * Books actually classified at how-to?s, guides, textbooks also dramatically increased
 * Medical Writing books increased
 * Technology and Culture books increased
 * Computers, Desktop & Electronic Publishing, Hypertext, Web Design (pedagogy) posted 27 articles
 * Document Design and Graphics (research) posted 23 articles (possibly related to interest noted in bullet above)
 * Instruction Issues/Pedagogical Research articles continue to record high publishing activity ||
 * ** 2004 ** || * Computers, Desktop & Electronic Publishing, Hypertext, Web Design books (10) and articles (29-pedagogy, 17-research) dominated bibliography
 * Textbooks, guides, how-to?s flourished with 20 volumes
 * Technology and Culture remained popular with 26 volumes published
 * Instruction Issues/Pedagogical research articles continued to record high publishing activity
 * Scientific Writing articles remained popular ||
 * ** 2005 ** || * Books published increased to 78 (Technology & Culture 20, Specialized Discourse (incl. rhetoric of science and science writing) 9, how-to?s/texts/guides 9
 * Collaborative and Group Processes Related to Writing articles increased to 59 entries
 * Computers, Desktop & Electronic Publishing, Hypertext, Web Design (pedagogy) posted 72 articles (surely related to explosion of DE)
 * Historical Studies articles increased to 58 (when a field grows, scholarship tends to look back at its roots)
 * Rhetoric of Science(research) articles jumped to 51 entries
 * Social Issues (gender, disability, ethnicity related to communication in research) increased to 61 articles
 * Technology and Culture (related to research) articles jumped to 77 articles
 * Theory and Philosophy (related to research) articles increased to 69
 * Process, Strategies, Usability articles (related to Technical Writing Practice) increased to 31
 * Book reviews exploded (311) possibly due to extra space dedicated to tangential topics ||