During the Professional Writing Resources Archive project, you and your team will work as a research team seeking out web- and print-based resources. From these searches, you and your team should collect 20 significant resources related to professional writing. In terms of the archive, you are looking for resources that are of benefit to other professional writing majors like yourself. That is, you should envision other students both here and at other institutions studying professional writing, and then should consider what resources are most valuable to this audience. You also can think about the many professional writing teachers who might see your resources as a means to convey important issues to students in their classes. Lastly, think about an audience of other professional writers who might browse your resource list to check out "hot" issues or emerging trends in professional writing. It will be important for you and your team to make your searches relevant to your primary audience but acknowledge that such a resource list could have broader implications. You and your team members will propose a broad category, search for materials that fit under that category, and develop annotations for these resources.

In this project, you and your team should work to refine your research skills, develop a strong collaborative environment, and understand some of the values of professional writers by making judgments about the kinds and types of resources that are significant to your area of interest. You should be guided by your individual working during project 1. As a class, we will discuss categories for the resources, and we will cover conducting web and library searches for resources, evaluating resources, and creating annotations. My hope is that this project will prompt further engagement with your area(s) of interest in professional writing and motivate you to explore ideas, concepts, and theories of professional writing that you might not have considered up until this point in your education and career.

selecting categories for resources

Consider some of the skills, language, and jobs that you discovered during your search for job ads in project 1. What resources could you begin searching for? What would you like to know more about in the field of professional writing? Listed below are some of my recommended categories, but you and your team can propose another category of your own choosing. You also might find that subcategories will become necessary as you pursue your searches.

Please note: In order to make this project useful to the entire class, each team will work on a separate category.

Copyright and intellectual property issues.
Professional organizations for professional writers.
Client Consulting relationships in professional writing.
Document design and development.
Electronic media design and development.
Usability testing.
Electronic resources for professional writers such as research forums and online chat spaces.

The possibilities are constrained only by where and how you approach your search. I have noted that you should be doing web research, but you also should be seeking out print-based resources. What kinds of print publications might you explore? What articles, essays, and books help professional writers shape their work? You will be listing these materials in a bibliography section of your web page(s). The format for these sources should be APA. See Purdue's Online Writing lab for information about APA style.

meeting the deadlines for project 2

You should begin brainstorming a list of 3 possible search categories as soon as possible, and you also should begin conducting those searches as soon as possible. On Tuesday, February 20th, you and your team members will decide on your selected category. On Tuesday, February 27th, each team member needs to have two full annotations completed for peer review. In order to participate in cross-team peer review, your team's 1st completed draft of 20 annotations is due on Tuesday, March 6th. Your team's completed draft of 20 annotations is due on or before Tuesday, March 13th.