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My bookshelves are rather bare, too, but that's because I spent most of the
past year looking for employment. (Even with a PhD.)
Let's see...
Interleaf/QuickSilver Reference Guides (both training manuals from class)
Export Compliance Workshop Guide (training manual)
Idiot's Guide to PCs
Internet for Dummies
Understanding Six Sigma - Internal publication from Motorola, ca. 1995
Six Sigma Producibility Analysis & Process Characterization - also ca. 1995
The Goal - Goldratt
Purple Cow (Seth Godin's recent one) - and the milk carton it came in
Webster's 9th New Collegiate Dictionary (rescued from an empty cubicle)
Knowledge-Based Management - Schmitt, Kiemel, & Burdine
Inside the Magic Kingdom - Connellan
Lean Thinking - Womack & Jones
The American College Dictionary (1957 ed.) - also rescued from the trash
heap
HTML Complete ("1,000 pages ONLY $19.99 U.S.!")
Roget's Thesaurus, 4th ed. - probably the best one ever assembled
Writing Without Teachers (Peter Elbow - good reference and practical how to
for people who want to write but have only recollections of "that
Charlotte's Web guy and someone else")
Drafting & Engineering Handbook (internal reference)
American Heritage dictionary (4th ed.)
Handbook of Writing for the Mathematical Sciences - Highman
Technical Writing: Principles and Forms - Andrews & Bickle
Technical Editing - Tarutz
The Bluebook of Citations - 15th Ed. - Law Reference Guide
Gregg Reference, 9th Ed
Microelectronic Circuits - 3rd Ed., Sedra & Smith
Collection of Internal Reference and Style Guides
The NEW Perfect Resume - Jackson & Jackson (gift from my brother)
A collection of a half-dozen teaching reference books, covering topics like
second language composition and grammatical exercises for non-native
language users.
I regularly point people to grammatical answers to their queries, so using
the language stuff isn't a big deal. Everyone gets lost in the trees,
sometimes, as they walk through the forest.
As for the PhD, it was probably a factor in getting the job I now have. But
it was balanced out by the experience I also had with the subject matter and
(more importantly) the types of source writers I work with (electrical
engineers).
Joe Hauglie
Technical Editor, Texas Instruments - Tucson
jhauglie -at- ti -dot- com
