#2

Shirk, Henrietta Nickels. “Researching the History of Technical Communication: Accessing and Analyzing Corporate Archives.” Teaching Technical Communication. Ed. James M. Dubinsky. Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2004. 128-138. Print.

1.     Shirk argues that technical communicators traditionally have overlooked the importance of looking at corporate archives, and, as a result, there is “little consensus about when [the field of technical communication] began and most likely vehement disagreement about whether such a concern [of the field’s history] is even important in the fast-faced changing environment of today’s workplace” (128).

2.     She suggests that studying corporate archives “provides three possible perspectives on the uses of history—diagnosis, analogy, and heritage” (129). Using history as a diagnostic tool includes “provid[ing] a foundation for proposing and implementing changes in existing publications to enable them to communicate more effectively with their intended audience” (130). Using history as an analogy allows companies to learn from the history of other, older, companies. Admittedly, “history…never repeats itself exactly… even so, there are lessons to be learned. Sometimes a history’s relevance lies in pointing out the irrelevant” (130). Using history as heritage allows a deeper understanding of companies, from the formal traditions of orientations and corporate publications to the informal traditions stories and standard routines.

Questions:

-  This article seemed like common sense to me, so I’m hoping that, as a class, we can be a devil’s advocate and think about maybe why looking through archives might not be useful. When would it be detrimental?

- How might you negotiate the public and the private? This question might be a bit paranoid, especially because I’m not completely sure about the legalities or technical possibilities. Shirk includes letters, memos, and journals as archived documents, “especially from pre-digital technology times” and says that they “can provide rich sources of historical material for technical communicators” (131). Can we include emails, texts, Facebook messages, etc? I guess I’m interested in this because, if we think about WSU, all of us are issued WSU emails. Would an archivist be able to look through our old emails twenty years from now? If we have a Facebook with a WSU affiliated job listed, that we access sometimes from the Wireless internet on campus or on school computers, will people have access to that information? Where do we draw that line between what people should be able to access and what they shouldn’t in the name of history?

Some connections I saw to other readings:  

Chapter 1: “A humanistic Rationale for Technical Writing” – Carolyn R. Miller

-       My article proposes a solution/suggestion for the question Miller poses on page 19, when she writes, “How can we teach a course, let alone develop a field of study, when we have no way to tell anyone what our subject matter is?” Shirk argues that the key to defining a field is through its history.

Chapter 7: "Gender, Technology, and the History of Technical Communication" -- Katherine T. Durack

-       Durack argues that women have been "largely absent from our recorded disciplinary past" (99). I think this is particularly interesting in the context of my article, as Shirk doesn't gender archived material and traditions. Durack overlooks archives as a means of recorded disciplinary past. I wonder how this might augment her argument.