Single Sourcing: An Introduction

Many documentation departments produce detailed and well-designed paper documentation. Increasingly, however, one paper manual is not enough. Pressure is growing to deliver your information online, perhaps on several different user platforms. You may need to reuse the information in your manuals for quick reference guides, training courses and marketing publications. This can mean that you find yourself re-creating virtually identical content over and over again. Duplicating your material for multiple media, multiple uses and multiple audiences is time-consuming and costly.

Darley, Justin. Cherryleaf (2002). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing

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: 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-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 from the Reader's Point of View

Documentation written for single-sourcing (topic based, like that found in DITA) has great potential for efficiency. Writing once and publishing in many publications (Developer Guides, User Guides, etc.) and many formats (pdf, html, HTMLHelp, etc.) turns into cost and time savings. However, these efficiencies can cause inefficiencies for the users. Many online help users complain they cannot find the information they need while using the search function. Readers are more likely to comprehend texts with a classical book architecture, an architecture which is often sacrificed in single sourced documents and online Help files. When texts are cohesive, readers are more likely to consider information to be clear, well organized and easy to follow. For comprehensibility, it is essential to have a manual review, even when composing is partially automated.

Mulvihill, Teresa. LiveTechDocs (2008). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing>Audience Analysis

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

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

Software for Building a Full-Featured Discipline-Based Web Portal

The University of Wisconsin-Madison's Internet Scout Project [1] received funding in the fall of 2000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation [2] to build an open source software package that would allow collection developers to share their collection's metadata via the web. The resulting software, the Scout Portal Toolkit (SPT), is virtually turnkey, very inexpensive to maintain and operate, and easy for non-technical staff to download, set up and populate with metadata. Conforming to international standards for metadata, data harvesting, and Web technology makes SPT useful for and usable by a wide variety of projects and organizations, allowing and encouraging collaboration and record sharing among projects. Over the SPT project's two-year period, beta testers and in-house quality assurance testing provided valuable feedback, helping to ensure that the software was robust, easy to use, and well-suited to the needs of the intended audience.

Almasy, Edward, David Sleasman and Rachael Bower. D-Lib Magazine (2002). Articles>Web Design>Content Management>Software

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>Content Strategy

Story Scrapbooks: Tools for Engagement

Thank heavens for big sisters—especially mine. I was over at Franca's house sipping hot chocolate and catching up on life. While we spoke, she was assembling another one of her family scrapbook masterpieces. We started talking about her work—she is an international marketing and publication relations consultant. As we discussed the internal communication challenges one of her clients was facing, I had a flash of brilliance. What if we helped the client put together a story scrapbook and then used it to facilitate conversations around the organization?

Gargiulo, Terrence. Communication World Bulletin (2006). Articles>Content Management>Knowledge Management>Business Communication

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

Striving for Success in DITA Conversion - A Quick Reference

Planning your conversion is always helpful, and should be part of your overall content strategy review.

Urbina, Noz. Data Conversion Laboratory (2008). 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>Content Strategy

Structured Content: What's in it for Writers?

Everyone has heard (or experienced) stories of CMS or knowledge management initiatives that did not work because content contributors refused to use the tools deployed or were unwilling or unable to supply content in the format required. The conclusion often reached is that writers cannot give up their WYSIWYG tools and that any attempt to make them do so is doomed to failure. On the other hand there are always those who will reply with stories of systems where writers have successfully adapted to the use of XML or SGML, and the CMS is working well. All that is required to duplicate this success, they maintain, is that writers must be forced and/or trained to use the new tools.

Baker, Mark. CMSwatch (2002). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing>Writing