College Composition and Communication Online |
OverviewA description of CCC Online is provided below. |
Origins
The drive to launch CCC Online began in February 1997 with Joseph Harris's editorial "Virtual Citings." In the fall of 1997, Todd Taylor, an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was appointed as the first Web Editor. The CCCC Executive Committee approved the appointment and committed financial support to the project in its November 1997 meeting.
With support from CCCC and the University of North Carolina, the original Web site was designed by Todd Taylor and the databases by a consultant at UNC: Will Sexton. Two graduate students at UNC, Candice Love and Julia Lee, compiled most of the information for the databases. Tom Tiller at NCTE and the staff at OmegaType in Urbana, IL provided electronic copies of typeset CCC files for translation into HTML. Eric Crump at NCTE headquarters oversaw the creation and maintenance of site storage on NCTE's Web servers.
The site was prepared and tested in Chapel Hill and then transferred to the NCTE Web server in Urbana. A beta version was in place in late 1997. A redesigned beta version was refined between January and March 1998. CCC Online was announced to the public on March 31, 1998.
CCC Online began to offer to subscribers a full-text version of its entire contents on December 20, 2001.
Design and Navigation
The design of CCC Online is guided by two principles: (1) easy access by a wide range of readers using a variety of interface technologies is more important to this site than complex graphical design; and, (2) ideally, texts should be stored in such a way that as interface technologies advance these texts will not need to be reformatted after initial uploading.
Consequently, almost all of the content of the site is formatted in basic HTML with either little or no graphical or multimedia elements. Users have a choice of a more robust Java-script graphical interface, a mid-range frames-based interface, or a pure-text navigational system. This design allows the content files to remain in their original format while enabling a choice of navigational interfaces, interfaces that may be improved as new technologies emerge.
The site has a fairly deliberate hierarchical structure, organized in four levels. Level one, the Home Page (at http://www.ncte.org/ccc/) merely asks users to select a version of the site that best accommodates their browser technology. Level two consists of three different navigational interfaces: a robust Java-script graphical interface, a mid-range frames-based interface, or a pure-text navigational system. The third level contains the tables of contents for each of the main segments of the Web site: Archives, Editorials, CCC Interactive, News, etc. The third level is formatted with colored bars (color will appear only in graphical browsers) across the top of the page and titles and copy flush-left (see below).
College Composition and Communication Online |
Sample Header of a Level Three FileLevel Three files have header copy that is formatted in normal body font, flush-left. |
Most of the content pages are located in level four. Pages at this level are also formatted with colored bars across the top of the page; however, all text and titles are flush right (see below).
College Composition and Communication Online |
Sample Header for a Level Four Content Page |
The colored bars used to format the content pages also reflect the structure of the site. The table below outlines this organization.
| Color | Indicates | Includes |
| Sky Blue | a journal column or feature | current issue(s), editorials, news |
| Pale Yellow | an archive file | articles, position statements |
| Copper | informational material | information on subscriptions, submissions, staff, editorial board, overview |
| Light Green | searchable online database | index and citation databases |
| Orange | an Internet-native feature | CCC Interactive, Parallels, links to other online resources |
| Gray | contact information | how to contact the Web Editor |
As noted elsewhere, our design intentionally emphasizes accessibility and functionality over graphical sophistication. Stable standards and principles for effective Web design have yet to emerge, especially since interface technology continues to change rapidly. For additional discussion of issues related to Web design, see The Yale Center for Advanced Instructional Media Web Style Guide by Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton and The Columbia Guide to Online Style by Janice Walker and Todd Taylor.
One of the benefits of online publication is that it can be used to reduce the lag between the time when a contribution is accepted and when it begins to become disseminated. Thus, the Current Issue(s) segment of CCC Online is so named because it includes information about not only the latest issue of CCC to reach print but also forthcoming scholarship. See also editorial on "current issue(s)."
Originally, CCC Online archived only abstracts of the major articles and features published in the print edition of CCC, beginning with Volume 49. CCC Online began to offer to subscribers a full-text version of its entire contents on December 20, 2001. Non-subscribers can still consult abstracts of articles.
The CCC Book Forum is an interactive, online book exhibit that never closes. Browse, search, keep up-to-date, exchanges comments with colleagues. Readers are encouraged to review any of the books in the database, although all reader reviews will not be published (and there will be a short waiting period before the book review editor can approve or reject a reader review). If you wish to review a book that does not yet appear in the database or you wish for the editor to review a particular book, please first read our book review policy, then contact the book review editor (contact information at the end of the policy statement). The initial reviews that CCC assigns are informative, not evaluative, and are often based on abstracts and decriptions provided by authors and publishers.
Subscription information for the print edition of CCC is provided in this section. Although CCC Online is available for free, it does not contain full-text copies of much of the material in the print edition.
This section provides guidelines for authors who wish to submit their work to CCC for publication.
CCC Online maintains a searchable database of material published in CCC. The database has two components: an index to every article and review published in CCC and a composite bibliography of every Works Cited in CCC since 1991.
CCC Online maintains full-text versions of every editorial published in CCC and CCC Online, beginning with Volume 45, 1994.
The editors strongly encourage responses from readers that attempt to generate dialogue between published texts, contributing authors, and CCC’s readers. Thus, they are eager for readers to participate in CCC Interactive, which is an Internet forum for discussing the articles published in CCC. CCC Online also publishes Interchanges and letters in response to the material in CCC and CCC Online.
CCC Online maintains full-text versions of all Announcements and CCCC News published in CCC, beginning with Volume 49, 1998. The editors also maintain a Current Calls and Announcements Bulletin Board for CFPs and the like that are either too recent or too late to fit appropriately into a current print issue.
As communication becomes increasingly multimedia and hypertextual, potential contributors to CCC may feel limited by the constraints of publishing their work in a conventional print journal. CCC accepts submissions formatted electronically for publication on the World Wide Web. In addition, some print articles may have supplemental material appropriate for Internet publication. Consequently, CCC Online’s Parallels also provides an electronic space in which authors are welcome publish materials that complement their texts accepted for publication and printed in the paper edition of CCC.
The editors strongly encourage readers to use CCC Interactive to generate dialogue between the journal's published texts, contributing authors, and CCC's readers. The Web Editor is also eager to gain general feedback on CCC Online through email. Inquiries regarding subscriptions and advertising should be addressed to the publisher, NCTE. We are also interested in general commentary on CCC Online and CCC.
A listing of current CCC staff and editorial board members.
CCC publishes position statements ratified by the membership of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) and/or its Executive Committee. They are archived in CCC Online in chronological order. CCC Online also publishes drafts of statements and reports under development by various committees or constituencies of CCCC. It's important to understand, however, that these draft documents are unofficial until ratified by either the Executive Committee of CCCC or the voting members of the organization.
We have provided a brief list of the Internet links most directly related to CCC and CCCC. The Alliance for Computers and Writing maintains a large and comprehensive list of links; their URL is provided in the list of related links.