Addressing Content Management Challenges
This examines what's needed to make content management systems work:
- What's needed: structured content
- From spaghetti to Lego™ blocks
- Structured writing for structured content
- Structured writing standards
- Comparison with Information Mapping
What's needed: structured content
For a content management system to work, it needs content designed for reuse and easy maintenance. It needs structured content that is
- modular: small enough to stand-alone as a comprehensible unit and be reused
- topic-defined: limited to one single, stand-alone subject
- consistent: each topic can be combined with other topics no matter how many authors developed the topics
- taggable: specific enough to be searchable and identifiable.
Lego™ Analogy
Structured content is like Lego blocks—small, independent modular topics
that snap together with other modular topics.
From spaghetti to Lego™ blocks
We must replace
- plates of spaghetti—strands of intertwined topics, with
- blocks of Lego™—independent topics that snap together effortlessly.
Structured content is made up of modular blocks of stand-alone topics that can be
- stored as tagged content objects in a content repository, and
- combined and recombined by a variety of users in a variety of ways for a variety of audiences and purposes.
Structured writing for structured content
For writers to develop modular content, they must stop writing traditional paragraphs and use a structured writing methodology. Such a methodology provides a consistent set of standards among all authors for developing content in reusable, topic-defined chunks.
Information Mapping provides users with a complete set of principles and tools that can be applied to any information and produces Blocks of reusable content.
Structured writing standards
Information Mapping is the oldest, most established structured writing standard. The term structured writing was coined by Robert E. Horn, the developer of Information Mapping.
These are the structured writing standards.
| Component | Tool | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Information Mapping | Information Mapping is a structured approach to creating clear, concise and highly usable information focused on the target audience. It does this through analyzing, organizing and presenting the information based on audience needs and the purpose of the information and by dividing and labeling information for easy comprehension, use and recall. | Started 1960 Published 1964 |
| STOP | Sequential Thematic Organization of Publications is a systematic method of organizing and writing the technical report and proposal which significantly improves outlining control and editorial caliber of the content. In a STOP report or proposal the subject matter is organized into a series of relatively brief themes, each presented in a "module" of two facing pages, complete with associated figure, if any. | Started 1960 Published 1965 |
| DocBook | DocBook is a schema maintained by the DocBook Technical Committee of OASIS and particularly well suited to books and papers about computer hardware and software (though it is by no means limited to these applications). DocBook has been adopted by a large and growing community of authors writing books of all kinds. | 1981 |
| S1000D | S1000D is an international specification for the procurement and production of technical publications, initially developed by the AeroSpace and Defence Industries Association of Europe (ASD) for use with military aircraft. The standard has since been modified for use with land, sea, and commercial equipment. S1000D is maintained by the Technical Publications Specification Maintenance Group (TPSMG). | 1980 |
| Minimalism | Minimalism is an action- and task-oriented approach to instruction and documentation that emphasizes the importance of realistic activities and experiences for effective learning and information seeking. Minimalism started around 1980 and its philosophy and developments were published in 'The Nurnberg Funnel' in 1990. | Started 1980 Published 1990 |
| SCORM | Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) is a collection of standards and specifications for web-based e-learning. It defines communications between client side content and a host system called the run-time environment and specifies how learning content objects must be developed and sequenced. | 1999-2000 |
| DITA | The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML-based architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. DITA divides content into small, self-contained topics that can be reused in different deliverables. The extensibility of DITA permits organizations to define specific information structures and still use standard tools to work with them. The ability to define company-specific and even group-specific information architectures enables DITA to support content reuse and reduce information redundancy. | 2001 |
Comparison with Information Mapping
For a comparison between Information Mapping and some of the structured writing standards, click on the following links:
- STOP: Two Approaches to Modularity: Comparing the STOP Approach with Structured Writing by Robert E. Horn
- Minimalism: Book Review The Nurnberg Funnel by John M. Carroll Reviewed by Robert E. Horn
- SCORM: Both RLOs (Reusable Learning
Objects) and RIOs (Reusable Information Object) are used to describe the
components of a learning object and are based on Dr. Ruth Clark's work using
Information Mapping. Click on http://media.wiley.com
/product_data/excerpt/56/07879649/0787964956.pdf - DITA: DITA is partially based on Information Mapping principles; for a comparison click on DITA and Information Mapping.
