Computer Supported Collaborative Writing

The distinction between loose, informal collaboration in private and single authorship or formal co-authorship in public has been crumbling for some years. The growth of interdisciplinary studies, international research projects, and distributed work groups within large companies, has exerted political and organizational pressure on writers to be seen to be collaborating. These writing groups often consist of people who rarely meet face-to-face, yet they are expected to collaborate closely, and to tight schedules. However, far more widespread than acknowledged co-authorship, is the practice of loose, informal collaboration: the sharing of ideas and opinions, supportive but critical reading of drafts, and emotional support. Behind the imprint of a single author there lies a complex web of friends, colleagues and unacknowledged influences. §Computers seem merely to extend the traditional means of collaboration: electronic mail substitutes for letter writing, computer conferencing substitutes for meetings, shared databases stand in for filing systems and libraries. In fact, each of these systems offers new ways of working and blurs the boundary between informal and formal collaboration. Not until recently have software designers proposed that the best systems to support collaboration are toolkits which enable groups to build software specific to their needs. Computer Supported Collaborative Writing arose from a one-day meeting which provided the first major opportunity for those working in the area of computers and collaborative writing to meet, present their work, and exchange ideas. The aim of the meeting was to bring together people with differing interest - design of software, studies of collaborating writers, CSCW for technical authoring, models of the collaborative writing process - to explore the research §problems and offer practical solutions. The chapters of this book are fuller accounts of the work presented during the meeting. Computer Supported Collaborative Writing offers in-depth studies of formal and informal collaboration and proposes preliminary designs for computer tools. It will provide invaluable reading for researchers and students, software designers, and writers.