Annotated Bibliography for Content Reuse and Single Sourcing
 

Albers

Ament

Bly

Boiko (1)

Boiko (2)

Butland (1)

Butland (2)

Cutler

Hackos and Rockley

Honkaranta and Tyrvainen

Horn

Kostur and Rockley

Moeller

Nichols

Redish

Rockley

Rosenblatt

Scriptorium

Shaw

Albers, Michael J. "Design of Complex Information." SIGDOC ’02. Oct. 2002, San Francisco. Information design is not, perhaps, the most obvious place to look for information about single sourcing. However, Albers defines eight steps in information design that apply to both subjects. For example, defining what makes information relevant to the goal is important when breaking a large document into the chunks recommended by most single-sourcing authorities (Rockley, Hackos). Similarly, defining the presentation requirements and building a model of the users’ goals and information needs are also important when analyzing the existing documentation and determining what content can be reused.

Ament, Kurt. Single Sourcing: Building Modular Documentation. Norwich: William Andrew Publishing, 2003. A basic tenet of this seminal document is that content reuse and usability are closely tied concepts. The structured writing essential for content reuse creates tighter, more focused documentation that is more usable in multiple formats. Ament has developed a seven-step process to modular documentation, beginning with identifying content, and moving through labeling, organizing, and eventually through cross-referencing. The book includes specific, practical recommendations for writing.

Bly, Robert W. The Online Copywriter’s Handbook. New York: McGraw Hill, 2002 (238-250). With content reuse, writers can rearrange information to form new documents from the same source documents. Bly applies well-documented marketing principles to writing for the Internet, which will be useful for writers who need to single source marketing from technical manuals. The section on writing for e-zines and the Internet explains why some writing for the Web should be written in the inverted pyramid form, that is, with all of the critical information in the lead paragraph. However, documents that have an accepted design, for example, a scientific scholarly paper that begins with an abstract, should stay with the accepted form.

Boiko, Bob. Content Management Bible. NY: Hungry Minds, Inc. 2002. This massive book covers all phases of content management, from planning to writing, from databases to workflow and staffing. Boiko includes numerous tips, recommendations, and code examples where appropriate. Purchasers of the book can access an online version at the Metatorial Web site, with indexes for illustrations and code samples, as well as white papers, presentations, and interviews. The Metatorial web site provides open access to additional white papers and other information on content management.

Boiko, Bob. "Where to Start with Content Management." Metatorial Services Inc. and HungryMinds Inc. 2002. Many of the books and articles about content management and single sourcing recommend starting the process by analyzing the current set of documentation. This insightful white paper describes the kinds of activities that a team given a vague mandate to "look into content management" need to carry out. For example, marketing and pre-sales support have information about the users of the product, which may be quite different from the information compiled by the Web team and the documentation team. All of the user information must be identified and collected before analysis can begin.

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Butland, Philip. "Introduction to Single Source, Part 1." Intercom. February 2001 (23-27). < "Introduction to Single Source, Part 1">. This article is a good introduction to single source. Butland explains what single source is, and importantly, when single sourcing is and is not appropriate. Butland describes the benefits not only in writer time, but also in the consistency gained by not updating a help system in parallel with a book. Localization savings can also be considerable, because translators have to translate fewer words.

Butland, Philip. "Introduction to Single Source, Part 2." Intercom. April 2001. (26-29). <"Introduction to Single Source, Part 2">. The second part of Butland’s article provides recommendations for optimizing the creation of online help from the FrameMaker files used to create a PDF or print book. By using conditional text, book-specific references such as "see Configuring on page 33" appear in the online help as "see Configuring", with all or part of the reference serving as the link. Butland concludes with a brief discussion of how databases can be used in single sourcing.

Cutler, Matthew. "King of the Highway." Feb. 1997. WebMaster Magazine. 08 Apr. 2004. < http://www.cio.com/archive/webbusiness/020197_king.html>. Cutler, in this early work on single sourcing, addresses using existing content and moving it to the Web. He recommends digestible sections or file of around 500 words, with links to the remaining material. He suggests rewriting material to achieve the friendlier tone often used in writing for the Web, and in a corporate setting, recommends assigning a content manager to make sure that the friendly tone doesn’t get out of hand.

Fraley, Liz. "Beyond Theory: Making Single-Sourcing Actually Work." SIGDOC ’03. Oct. 2003. San Francisco. Fraley presents a case study of how her department moved from FrameMaker and WebWorks to Arbortext and Interwoven to publish a large library of manuals. When she researched the project, she found that most of the literature thoroughly covered theory, planning, and recommendations for implementing modular writing, but little on actually practice. Fraley describes the successes and problems the group had as they moved different parts of the library to the new system.

Hackos, Joann and Ann Rockley. "Single Sourcing White Paper." 1999. SingleSource Associates. 08 Apr. 2004. < http://www.infomanagementcenter.com/pdfs/white_paper_001.pdf >. In this classic and widely quoted paper, the authors start by explaining that converting the same files for PDF and help files is not the same as single sourcing. By breaking the documents into components and identifying common information, writers can reuse the content, rearranging it as needed. The consistency of the documentation set improves, and the close evaluation of the content may lead to reorganization that improves usability. Rockley and Hackos describe a development process that starts with analyzing the content, and finishes with usability testing and training the writers. This white paper is the nucleus from which both authors have developed books and numerous articles.

Honkaranta, Anne and Pasi Tyrvainen. "Designing Training in Manufacturing Organizations Using the Genre-based Method." Educational Technology & Society. 6 (4). 08 Apr. 2004. <http://ifets.ieee.org/periodical/6_4/8.pdf >. This article approaches single sourcing through reusing Learning Objects. The authors use the concept of genre, "a typical communicative action, characterized by a similar substance and form, and enacted as a response to recurrent situations." The authors analyzed the components in the operating manuals in a manufacturing plant, and identified the material that could be reused for training customers. As a result of their pilot study, the authors propose that by using XML, the content can be separated from the format, optimizing reuse. The manufacturing background of this article provides a useful change in perspective from the numerous single source examples that involve computer documentation.

Horn, Robert E. "What Kinds of Writing Have a Future?" Speech. Association of Computer Machinery SIGDOC. 22 Oct. 2001. Transcript. 08 Apr. 2004. <http://www.stanford.edu/~rhorn/a/topic/stwrtng_infomap/spchWhatKindsofWriting.pdf>. Horn is best known for developing Information Mapping, the structured style of writing that has significantly changed the way we do technical writing. In this transcript of a speech, he describes how he developed the ideas and how chunking and labels, two of the notable principles of Information Mapping apply to single sourcing. From there, Horn explains how other Information Mapping concepts form a natural technique for single sourcing.

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Kostur, Pamela and Ann Rockley. "Information Modeling for Single Sourcing." 2001. STC Annual Conference Proceedings. 08 Jun. 2004. <http://www.stc.org/confproceed/2001/PDFs/STC48-000158.PDF> Kostur and Rockley describe a five-phase process that facilitates the move to single sourcing, beginning with an audit of existing information and its audience, and moving through developing a model and training the staff. The authors envision three levels of single sourcing, with Level 1 a straightforward conversion of identical content into different formats such as PDF and HTML. The authors devote several pages to information modeling.

Moeller, Elizabeth Weise. "Repurposing Content." IEEE Professional Communication Society. May/June 2002. 08 Jun. 2004. <http://www.imediaconsult.com/nn23.html>. Short but impressively practical, this newsletter article addresses issues about when it makes sense to repurpose content. The focus is on converting a print document or PDF file to HTML, and making the content useful in its new format. Moeller discusses the longevity of the document, the size of the expected audience, and the appropriateness of the materials as considerations. She concludes with recommendations for rewriting to improve the usability of the content.

Nichols, Jason. "Information on the Assembly Line: A Review of Information Design and Its Implications for Technical Communicators." October 2002. University of Central Florida. 08 Jun. 2004. <http://jason-nichols.home.att.net/nichols-thesis-published.pdf>. In his Master’s thesis, Nichols undertakes a literature review that summarizes how information design is having an effect on technical communication. He concludes that an understanding of both information design and database design is critical for technical communicators today. The principles of information design will help writers to analyze the source material and identify material suitable for single sourcing for different deliverables, such as user manuals and marketing brochures. The common content, optimally, will be stored in a database to ensure version control.

Redish, Janice C.. "What Is Information Design?" Technical Communication. May 2000. <http://www.techcomm-online.org/issues/v4n2/full/0389.html/>. Redish identifies two uses of the term information design. As an overall process for developing a usable document, information design focuses on defining what users want and need. In a narrower sense, information design addresses how content is laid out on the page or screen. Although the classic intent of single sourcing is to separate content from format, Redish points out that single sourcing requires information design in both senses of the term.

Rockley, Ann, with Pamela Kostur and Steve Manning. Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy. Indianapolis: New Riders. 2003. In this seminal work, Rockley et al. introduce the concept of an "information silo," with individual writers recreating very similar modules for their respective products, or for different deliverables, such as online help and a user manual. In collaborative authoring, the documentation team identifies common information in different products and writers take ownership of specific components across product lines. The book discusses the required planning to establish a single-source environment, the issues of getting writers to accept structured writing, and tools that can facilitate the process.

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Rosenblatt, Bill. "Cross-Media Publication: Obey the Content Master." EContent. July 2001. 08 Apr. 2004. http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/ArticleReader.aspx?ArticleID=4783&IssueId=106 Rosenblatt ties content reuse to the idea of a content master, similar to the master of a movie, which could have a director’s cut, a theatrical release, and a version for a DVD or VCR. Rosenblatt makes the surprising suggestion that the Web version of a document should be the master version, with the print and PDA versions deriving from it. The article touches on XML and some of the tools that can be used in single sourcing.

Scriptorium Publishing Services, Inc.. "Managing Implementation of Structured Authoring." 2004. 04 Apr.2004. <<http://www.scriptorium.com/str_implementation.pdf>>. This paper defines structured authoring in the sense of using a structured template, that is, a template that enforces compliance. Writers who move from a strictly enforced template generally have little trouble moving to a structured template, such as structured FrameMaker. With structure, writers cannot "tweak" a template to get a better page layout. Implementing structure requires planning to analyze the documents, create the necessary definition files, train the writers, and convert legacy documents.