Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Editorial

Editorial Editorial 29 Editorial Stan Dicks North Carolina State University sdicks@unity.ncsu.edu Depending on when we start counting, this journal is celebrating (or has just passed) its 25th year of publication. SIGDOC, again depending on how we look at things, is celebrating its 20th anniversary as an œofficial  ACM special interest group. Hence, this is an excellent time to step out of our normal format and to publish reminiscences from several previous SIGDOC Chairs about the organization ™s beginnings and its history. Have you ever wondered about why this journal has an asterisk in its name? Joe Rigo, who was truly the founder of the SIG and for whom our annual award is named, offers a bemused account of his early and complicated interaction with the powers that be at the ACM, including how the asterisk came to be. Joe is retired and still lives in NewYork City. Diana Patterson describes the dramatic changes that took place in the computer industry during the 80 ™s, including the effects they had on documentation people. She also describes the rapid growth of SIGDOC and some of its earliest conferences. Diana, for whom our award to outstanding organizations is named, currently teaches at Mount Royal College in Calgary, Alberta. John Brockmann describes growth in the field that was so pronounced that we have actually become many sub-disciplines. He describes initiating the Diana Award to recognize organizations that have contributed to our discipline. And he discusses what was perhaps the most (in)famous event at any SIGDOC conference ever. John is still on the faculty at the University of Delaware, where he is also serving as the Episcopal Chaplain. Kathy Haramundanis concludes by describing the last few years of the organization, the state of the profession today, and some ideas about where we are heading. She discusses the way new technologies have changed the profession, both related to the systems that we document and to the tools that we use to do so. Cathy continues to work at Compaq. About the August Issue In the next issue, we will return to the journal ™s normal format, with a reprint article, several commentaries, and a reply by the original article ™s author. We reiterate our request for new articles and especially for awareness essays, which are shorter articles about ongoing research, about new or innovative ideas, or about subjects that do not warrant full article treatment. ACM Journal of Computer Documentation, 2001,25:30 © 2001 by the Association for Computing Machinery. All rights reserved. ISSN 1527-6805 http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png ACM Journal of Computer Documentation (JCD) Association for Computing Machinery

Editorial

Download PDF
1 page

Loading next page...
 
/lp/association-for-computing-machinery/editorial-fM8MLoiw6x

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 by ACM Inc.
ISSN
1527-6805
DOI
10.1145/504776.504777
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Editorial 29 Editorial Stan Dicks North Carolina State University sdicks@unity.ncsu.edu Depending on when we start counting, this journal is celebrating (or has just passed) its 25th year of publication. SIGDOC, again depending on how we look at things, is celebrating its 20th anniversary as an œofficial  ACM special interest group. Hence, this is an excellent time to step out of our normal format and to publish reminiscences from several previous SIGDOC Chairs about the organization ™s beginnings and its history. Have you ever wondered about why this journal has an asterisk in its name? Joe Rigo, who was truly the founder of the SIG and for whom our annual award is named, offers a bemused account of his early and complicated interaction with the powers that be at the ACM, including how the asterisk came to be. Joe is retired and still lives in NewYork City. Diana Patterson describes the dramatic changes that took place in the computer industry during the 80 ™s, including the effects they had on documentation people. She also describes the rapid growth of SIGDOC and some of its earliest conferences. Diana, for whom our award to outstanding organizations is named, currently teaches at Mount Royal College in Calgary, Alberta. John Brockmann describes growth in the field that was so pronounced that we have actually become many sub-disciplines. He describes initiating the Diana Award to recognize organizations that have contributed to our discipline. And he discusses what was perhaps the most (in)famous event at any SIGDOC conference ever. John is still on the faculty at the University of Delaware, where he is also serving as the Episcopal Chaplain. Kathy Haramundanis concludes by describing the last few years of the organization, the state of the profession today, and some ideas about where we are heading. She discusses the way new technologies have changed the profession, both related to the systems that we document and to the tools that we use to do so. Cathy continues to work at Compaq. About the August Issue In the next issue, we will return to the journal ™s normal format, with a reprint article, several commentaries, and a reply by the original article ™s author. We reiterate our request for new articles and especially for awareness essays, which are shorter articles about ongoing research, about new or innovative ideas, or about subjects that do not warrant full article treatment. ACM Journal of Computer Documentation, 2001,25:30 © 2001 by the Association for Computing Machinery. All rights reserved. ISSN 1527-6805

Journal

ACM Journal of Computer Documentation (JCD) – Association for Computing Machinery

Published: May 1, 2001

There are no references for this article.