Single-sourcing became popular technical communication practice in the 1990s, as technical communicators' professionalism (and salaries) increased and the costs of documentation production rose. Single sourcing reuses information from manuals in quick reference guides, training courses and marketing publications. This can mean decreased costs for writing, translation, illustration and document design, but requires specific expertise and software. Today, single-sourcing is often seen as closely related to content management.
#18894
Single Source Tools: An Integrated Solution 
Tools are a key component for the success of single sourcing. Tools should be selected to support the information model and development processes. This session reviews the types of single source tools (authoring, XML, content management, output, and dynamic content engines) that are available to you today. The session presentation will review the available tools Note that the tools mentioned in this paper may change by the time of the presentation.
Rockley, Ann. STC Proceedings (2002). Design>Content Management>Single Sourcing
#19815
Discusses the current state of technical communication in China and analyzes key Chinese cultural values compatible with single sourcing. Reports on a skills survey conducted among Chinese and U.S. participants.
Wiles, Debbie. Technical Communication Online (2003). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing>China
#19811
Single Sourcing and the Technical Communication Career Path 
Considers how most technical writing uses a craftsman model and evaluates the applicability of that model to single sourcing. Proposes a technical communication career path with distinct job responsibilities for junior and senior writers.
Albers, Michael J. Technical Communication Online (2003). Careers>Content Management>Single Sourcing
#22709
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
#20463
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
#15195
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>Single Sourcing>Microsoft Word>Adobe RoboHelp
#13641
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
#19813
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
#18783
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
#23750
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
#23671
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
#18874
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
#28417
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
#22165
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
#31167
Single-Source Documentation: Docbook versus DITA
When it comes to documentation projects, primarily technical, medical, and scientific, using XML is a no-brainer. The heavy thinking comes when deciding which flavor of XML to use: DocBook or DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture). I have been a steadfast supporter of DocBook for over six years. I'd tried my hand at DITA and gave it up as a fad; lots of bells and whistles, but too complicated to integrate. And couldn't DocBook do everything DITA promised anyway?
Mulvihill, Teresa. LiveTechDocs (2008). Articles>Documentation>Single Sourcing>XML
#31160
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
#13218
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
#24780
Single-Sourcing Online Documentation for Multiple GUIs, Languages, and Software Releases
A small documentation team devised an innovative workflow to provide documentation for Interleaf publishing software for Windows and Motif, in English, French, German, and Japanese, using a single set of online source documentation. We used technology to streamline tasks, maximize communication, and optimize the documentation for future updates.
Bayer, Douglas, Rosalyn Reiser, Andrea Muren Shanahan and Margaret Waters. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Documentation>Single Sourcing
#19780
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
#22098
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
#18887
A Solution to Writing Winning Sales Proposals and Other Sales Documents
This article explains how we built a solution to producing sales proposals and other sales literature for our own company using an affordable content management solution.
Pratt, Ellis. Cherryleaf (2003). Articles>Business Communication>Single Sourcing>Documentation
#14078
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.
#22197
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
#13835
The Technical Editor and Document Databases: What the Future May Hold
Technical editors ensure a document communicates with the reader. With XML, active server pages, and dynamic document creation, Web pages are no longer simple hand-crafted text objects, but dynamic groupings of text assembled moments before the reader views the page. With dynamic documents, high-level editing tasks will be, at best, vaguely defined during text creation. To maximize the information content, future technical editors require tighter control over information consistency and content.
Albers, Michael J. Technical Communication Quarterly (2000). Articles>Editing>Single Sourcing>Technical Editing
#14083
Ten Practical Techniques for Single-Sourcing with FrameMaker
A PowerPoint slide show about using FrameMaker for single-source document creation and management.
WritersUA (2002). Presentations>Content Management>Single Sourcing>Adobe FrameMaker
