TOC m The JCD Table of Contents Experiment T. R. Girill, * JCD, E d i t o r - i n - C h i e f A t various times over the last several decades, I have received professional-society newsletters that regularly reprinted the tables of contents from topic-related journals. Usually the contents lists were not formally annotated or ranked, just summarized to spread awareness of possibly relevant articles among busy people sharing common interests. This is a simple service, but one that has always benefited me. Hence, whenever the usual stream of commentaries, reviews, and reprints happens to ebb in a *JCDissue, I plan to offer selected tables of contents from documentation-related journals (broadly construed) as a supplement to JCD's primary material. I have long been curious about the extent to which my neglect of two professional journals-Wn'tten Communication (from Sage Publications) and College Composition and Communication (published by the National Council of Teachers of English)-was keeping helpful, interesting articles from me. So those journals have become the first targets for ~lCD'soccasional table-of-contents service. A survey of articles in Written Communication from January, 1993, through June, 1995, revealed a fairly abstract and literary editorial emphasis. Of the 44 articles appearing during that 30-month period, only two clearly overlapped with prime issues in documentation: Winsor, D. A. (1994). "Invention and Writing in Technical Work-Representing the Object." Written Communication, 11:2 (April), 227-250. Kaufer, D. S., and Carley, K. (1994). "Some Concepts and Axioms about Communication-Proximate and at a Distance." Written Communication, 11:1 (January), 8-42. College Composition and Communication (CCC), on the other hand, treats documentation-related issues more frequently, and in ways familiar to ~ICD readers. Many CCC pages go to professional book reviews, for example, and sometimes several related books are reviewed together in the same issue or even by the same commentator. LiteracyOnline, for instance, was first reviewed in the October, 1993, CCCissue, then again in comparison with three similar texts in December, 1994. And three reviews of books on science prose and argument appeared together in May, 1995. Another familiar CCC occasional feature is an original paper with commentary: in May, 1993, seven commentators responded to a position paper on diversity issues in writing instruction, for example, while in February, 1995, the commentary focused on a treatment of goal conflicts between writing and teaching writing. Single papers related to documentation are also fairly frequent in CCC, as a review of the 30-month table-of-contents sample reprinted below reveals. Audience and authority, distance communication and literacy levels, as well as "The Shape of Text to Come" (by SIGDOC's own Stephen Bernhardt, May, 1993) all receive scrutiny from CCCauthors during this period. CCCis often available in college libraries, and hence by interlibrary exchange of photocopies through your company or agency library as well.

/lp/association-for-computing-machinery/the-jcd-table-of-contents-experiment-OhCpNP5s2m