Single Sourcing: Benefits to the Life Sciences  

Life sciences companies are experiencing many pressures including electronic initiatives like eSubmissions and the eCTD, regulatory controls like 21 CFR Part 11, and decreasing times to market. Life Sciences companies are looking for ways to improve the way they create and manage content. Developing reusable content (single sourcing) is one solution. This session looks at the benefits single sourcing can bring to the life sciences industry.

Rockley, Ann and Steve Manning. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing>Biomedical

Single Sourcing, Content Management and the Otobase Project

This report examines some of the issues raised by multiuse publishing in the context of the Otobase software documentation project at the University of Washington. In doing so, it aims to contribute to our understanding of how single sourcing and content management might help us better adapt to users, and also to view the impact of a structured approach to documentation on writers and editors. The report will also use these ideas to suggest both current and long-term improvements for the Otobase project. First, it will briefly describe the project and its current documentation, and then look at theories of single sourcing, content management and structured documents before applying these theories to the project itself.

Burner, Dell. University of Washington-Seattle (2002). Books>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Single Sourcing: Friend or Foe?

Single sourcing sounds good, but can you justify it in your organization? Reducing the need to maintain multiple versions of content produces real savings and improves return on investment (ROI). On the other hand, implementing single sourcing can be expensive and slow, and information developers will be on the spot to continue delivering content through every stage of the process.

Hawkins, John. MetroVoice (2004). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Single Sourcing in Technical Communication

Technical Communication covers miscellaneous applications. So far you needed a separate tool for each purpose had to use several document formats for distribution and archiving. The xml-based format SVG cleans up with this misery, because SVG allows to use one single source for text, illustrations and animations ("Single Sourcing").

Fibinger, Iris. SVG Open (2002). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Single Sourcing in Technical Communication

No term has caused such a sensation in recent years among technical writers and illustrators as 'Single Sourcing.' The reasons: Enormous amounts of text and image material builds up in documentation and illustration companies. It is not uncommon for individual documents to contain several thousands of pages. If this is translated into several languages, then the administration needs are greater for both texts and graphics (graphics can contain text which must also be translated).

Fibinger, Iris. SVG Open (2002). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing>Technical Writing

Single Sourcing: It's About People, Not Just Technology    

Cautions that failing to focus on the people in the organization may diminish the success of a single-sourcing initiative. Covers changes that need to occur in the organization to support a single-sourcing initiative and ways to address issues of change.

Rockley, Ann. Technical Communication Online (2003). Design>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Single Sourcing: Our First Year  

Single sourcing creates multiple documents from a single content file. Developing single-source content is an efficient way to produce documentation. This topic has stirred considerable interest among technical writers the last few years and more and more departments are adopting the process. The following experiences and advice, based upon our use of FrameMaker and WebWorks Publisher Professional, are meant to assist a documentation department that is about to begin a single-source process or is considering making this transition.

Welch, Erin Beal and Lori Beard. STC Proceedings (2002). Design>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Single Sourcing with RoboHelp and Word  

Details a nine-step process for single sourcing with eHelp's RoboHelp and Microsoft Word.

Barefoot, Darren K. Intercom (2001). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing>Microsoft Word

Single-Source Content Management   

More and more businesses are expanding into international markets. A critical success factor for this expansion is high-quality, cost-effective and timely translated written content. Responsibility for this typically falls on internal translation departments or localization partners. Translation comes at a high price, exceeding the cost of writing the original content after only a few languages.

Trotter, Paul. tekom (2006). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing>Localization

Single-Source Content Management: If, Why and How  

Introduces the five levels of single-sourcing.

Hackos, JoAnn T. ComTech Services (2002). Presentations>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Single-Source Tools and Techniques  

Tools are a key component for the success of single sourcing. Tools should be selected to support the information model and development processes. Selecting the technology first, without a clear understanding of your information needs, may significantly restrict your ability to produce effective single source materials. This paper reviews the types of single source tools that are available to you today. The session presentation will review the available tools and provide their pros and cons.

Rockley, Ann. STC Proceedings (2000). Presentations>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Single-Sourcing Management List  

Singlesourcing-mgmt is a moderated mailing list for those interested in the management of single sourcing and related topics. Although some technical chatter is inevitable due to the nature of the material, the intent is that highly technical topics will be discussed in other forums such as DocBook lists. Among the many topics that are encouraged on SingleSourcing-Mgmt: Developing a Single Sourcing Strategy Business case development Vendor and Tool Evaluation Information Modeling Developing and Implementing Content Management Solutions Defining Requirements for Single Sourcing Systems Business Process Management and Workflow Establishing and Staffing Single Sourcing Departments In addition to the mailing list, SingleSourcing-Mgmt offers: Moderated Chats on topics related to Single Sourcing Management; Links to vendors, books, and member websites and websites related to group topics; A file repository where members can post files for other members; Databases of frequently asked questions for those new to Single Sourcing, Vendor Databases and more; An event Calendar with events related to single sourcing both on and offline.

Yahoo (2002). Resources>Mailing Lists>Content Management>Business Case

Single-Sourcing Tools and Techniques  

This paper describes how our publications team built a new single-sourced documentation set consisting of five printed manuals totaling 1,470 pages and seven Windows online help files totaling 7.5 megabytes. To accomplish this project, we used detailed writing guidelines, specially-designed templates, and a powerful online help authoring tool.

Hart, Jessica, Nola J. Hague and Diana Peh. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Single-Sourcing with FrameMaker

As a technical writer, you may be exploring single-sourcing--producing multiple document outputs from a single information source--as a possible option for easing document development and production. Although solutions such as databases, SGML, and XML are available that can enable you to reuse information to produce multiple outputs, single-sourcing doesn't have to involve such complex solutions, expenses, and learning curves. Instead, if your single-sourcing needs are relatively simple, you can effectively single-source using a tool that technical writers commonly have available: FrameMaker.

Marques, Michele. TECHWR-L (2002). Design>Content Management>Software>Adobe FrameMaker

Single-Sourcing with FrameMaker and SiberSafe

Like many of you, I’ve struggled over the years to find the right combination of tools and processes to reliably manage large volumes of volatile text under the duress of seemingly impossible deadlines. Inevitably, I had to learn to customize my tools and automate as much of the process as I could. This meant getting under the hood and learning numerous scripting and markup languages. I was constantly exploring new technologies and applications that could take on some of the heavy lifting.

Hanna, Rob. STC Puget Sound (2005). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing>Adobe FrameMaker

Sisällönhallinta

Sisällönhallinnan voidaan sanoa muodostuvan joukosta toimenpiteitä jotka kohdistetaan WWW-selaimella tarkasteltavissa oleviin digitaalisiin informaatiokoosteisiin. Hallintatoimenpiteisiin kuuluvat mm. sisältökoosteiden siirtäminen niiden elinkaaren vaiheesta toiseen; yleisimmät tällaiset vaiheet ovat luonti, päivittäminen, julkaisu ja arkistointi (tai poistaminen). Toimenpiteitä tehdään yleensä WWW-selainta käyttäen. Käytännössä toimenpiteiden suorittamisesta vastaa palvelintietokoneella suoritettava erikoistunut ohjelmistokokonaisuus, jota kutsutaan sisällönhallintajärjestelmäksi.

Wikipedia. (Finnish) Articles>Content Management

Smarter Content Publishing: Building A Semantic Website to Increase the Efficiency and Usability of Publishing Systems

The web is not print. The need to create hypertext within pages requires more control over documents. Another is that web pages can also be applications, so access to the 'guts' of the page is needed to insert programming code. And ideally, we would like to separate presentation from content, enabling us to format the content in different ways for different purposes. How can we achieve all this with the efficiency and usability we've come to expect of other publishing tools?

Lombardi, Victor. Digital Web Magazine (2002). Design>Content Management>Web Design

So, What is a Content Management System?

A content management system (CMS) is critical to the success of almost every website and intranet, and yet many organisations are not familiar with this technology.

Robertson, James. Step Two (2003). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Software Developer Needs Advice

We are a web-based software development firm looking for basic guidelines for making a CMS.

Byrne, Tony. CMSworks (2004). Articles>Content Management

Sources of CMS Uncertainty

Not all aspects of a content management system (CMS) project are equally easy. While some elements can be installed 'out of the box', others have proved difficult to implement. The starting point for improving the management of CMS projects is to recognise the sources of uncertainty, and how these affect project outcomes.

Robertson, James. Step Two (2004). Design>Web Design>Content Management

STC and the W3C  

As technologies like XML, content management software (CMS), and single sourcing continue to seep into technical communication, they bring demands for cost-effective development, faster time-to-market, and automation. Meeting these demands will require standards for coding, language, metadata, and other such elements. The good old days of 'winging it' in documentation are coming to an end.

Perlin, Neil E. Intercom (2004). Design>Web Design>Content Management>Standards

STC Single Sourcing Special Interest Group

A special interest group dedicated to work using a single document source to generate multiple types of document outputs; workflows for creating multiple outputs from a document or database source.

STC. Organizations>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Storage and Enterprise Content Management  

Almost one-third of the users reported that more than 40 percent of the storage spending is for unstructured documents and information--I think that percentage will continue to grow annually. Further, AIIM President John Mancini, who prepared the report, found that larger organizations especially are aggressively pursuing consolidation and rationalization of their storage and archiving strategies--but that cost is not the prime motivation behind those activities.

McKellar, Hugh. KMworld (2006). Articles>Content Management>Information Design

Streamlining Content Creation and Publishing with XMetaL and DITA  

To streamline the product documentation process, many technical publication teams are moving to Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). Learn best practices for applying this information model, and hands-on techniques for improved content creation and publishing with JustSystems XMetaL.

Silver, Jerry. Intercom (2007). Articles>Content Management>XML>DITA

Structured Content Management in the Enterprise  

As other areas within organizations begin to consider structured content for the same reasons as technical communication departments, technical communicators have a golden opportunity to assist others in their move toward structured CM.

Rockley, Ann. Intercom (2007). Articles>Content Management>Information Design