What Scott claimed that composition studies still lacked and sorely needed in 1986 when he wrote the above passage was “on-going, systematic, non-judgmental coverage of activity in the field” (167).
This need began to be filled the following year, although it was more than a decade before an annual bibliography in composition studies had a permanent home. In 1987 and 1988, Erika Lindemann edited the Longman Bibliography of Composition and Rhetoric, which provided citations and annotations of scholarship in the discipline that was published in 1984–1986. When Longman discontinued this series after publishing just two volumes, the CCCC contracted with Southern Illinois University Press to continue the annual bibliography under the title the CCCC Bibliography of Composition and Rhetoric. The nine volumes that followed provide citations and annotations of scholarship in composition studies that was published in 1987–1995. These annual volumes then ceased because the CCCC began plans to join its annual bibliography with the one compiled by the Modern Language Association (MLA); however, Todd Taylor later combined all eleven volumes from both prior publishers and updated them through 1999 into an online, searchable, open access database. Scholarship published after 1999 that would have been included in this annual bibliography, had it been continued, is instead indexed in the MLA International Bibliography.
Whereas composition studies once lacked adequate bibliographic resources, such resources for the discipline are now plentiful. In addition to the continuation of the discipline’s annual bibliography in the MLA International Bibliography, students and professionals can also use CompPile, JSTOR, ERIC, WorldCat and other valuable resources to conduct bibliographic research in composition studies. Because all of these resources differ in how they operate and what they offer, now more than ever, students entering the discipline need bibliographic instruction to gain skill in using these varied resources astutely.
It may be tempting to become comfortable with only one or two bibliographic resources and to assume they will produce adequate results, but Scott warns against this practice, arguing that “in composition, as in other reference fields, we are often channeled by our favorite bibliography’s taxonomy and coverage base into one particular research tradition or one phase of a continuing debate, while being cut off from other traditions or phases, and we need, here as in other disciplines, to come to terms with this channeling effect” (“Bibliographical Problems” 176). Elsewhere, Scott reiterates this advice: “For most purposes, it is better to use multiple bibliographical sources rather than relying on a single favorite source—not just because a favorite source might exclude relevant items (different bibliographies have different methodological leanings, for instance), but because in any particular source all the relevant items may not be sorted or indexed under the heading(s) the researcher is using” (“Bibliographical Resources” 88). An important objective of this text, then, is to make you confident about your ability to enhance your search results by using multiple bibliographic resources.
In addition, in keeping with the recommendations of the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) previously discussed, the bibliographic instruction you will learn in this text extends beyond just explaining the tools available to addressing the research process itself. The importance of this approach, as articulated by Scott, is worth quoting at length:
Practical advice about composition bibliography must therefore be concerned with attitudes and search-strategies, not just with the bibliographies themselves. Often, for instance, when quite sophisticated composition graduate students turn to a bibliographical search, they revert to the worst kind of old-style high-school-research-paper thinking and assume that, given the right subject-heading and the right bibliography, they ought to find readymade the list of all necessary material. This could only be true if the research project was a first-level search on a very stable aspect of the discipline. As compositionists should know, research-writing (and therefore research) is not simply about assembling readymade information, but about changing the ways a topic can be looked at and about making new cross-connections between material. (“Bibliographical Resources” 87)
Scott continues by cautioning researchers against relying on “the bibliographer’s prepackaged selections” (“Bibliographical Resources” 87) and explains that “specialized bibliographies [ . . . ] are best used for preliminary orientation to a topic, or for refreshing our sense of the range of material, rather than as a substitute or short-cut for our own systematic library search early in a major project” (“Bibliographical Resources” 79).
What this text will teach you is the processes used by experienced researchers in the discipline, what Scott describes as “search-strategies that maximize [your] own active choosing role” (“Bibliographical Resources” 87). Such strategies are not self-evident in composition studies, making the bibliographic instruction provided in this text necessary. I contend, though, as does Scott, that what makes composition studies bibliographically challenging is what also makes it bibliographically interesting (“Bibliographical Resources” 90–91).
In 1994, Paul Bryant wrote that because bibliographic resources in composition studies now exist, the discipline no longer needs to function as if we face “a brand new world every morning.” Yet the bibliographic needs of the discipline are still pressing:
Perhaps most important, and still much neglected, is the education of graduate students soon to be entering the profession. Use of the ample bibliographic resources in literary studies has been a staple of graduate education in English for generations, but similar instruction in composition and rhetoric is still seldom found, even in some of our most progressive research institutions. This, perhaps, is the next major project for those who would make the study of composition and rhetoric a fully developed academic discipline. We have the tools. Now let us make sure that the next generation of composition teachers and scholars are adequately prepared to use them. (“No Longer” 150)
As I write this chapter fifteen years later, the need for bibliographic instruction in composition studies is still largely unmet. With this book, I hope to fill this need.
Suggestions for Using This Book
The first half of this book provides an introduction to composition studies as a field. More specifically, chapter two explains the modes of inquiry that people in the field use to construct disciplinary knowledge, and chapter three explains the ways in which knowledge in composition studies is disseminated to others in the field. Both of these chapters provide a useful context for helping you to locate work done in composition studies and assess the significance of any source for your own research project as well as its significance to the field. The remaining chapters of this book guide you through your own research process. While reading chapter four, you will make preliminary decisions about your own bibliographic search techniques and criteria. Chapter five will then introduce you to databases and bibliographies that are especially useful to composition studies, and chapter six will guide you through the research and writing process to produce an annotated bibliography and literature review. Even if you are most interested in the discipline-specific databases and guidance for bibliographic assignments that is offered in the final chapters, I recommend that you read this book in sequence and in its entirety because the early chapters will give you knowledge about the field that will help you to make wiser decisions about your research strategies and the individual sources you find. Ultimately, though, you will gain the most from this book if you don’t simply read it; you should instead identify a bibliographic project that you can undertake as you read, which will allow you to practice the research strategies and become more adept at using the bibliographic resources discussed in this book.
Perhaps you are encountering this book as a text for a course in which you are enrolled. If so, it is likely that your professor will assign one or more written projects that require you to locate, read, and synthesize prior knowledge in composition studies about a particular topic; the guidance offered in this text can help you to complete those assignments.