CIDM Information Management News Volume 5, Issue 11

Information Management News
Volume 5, Issue 11
November 2005

A monthly e-newsletter from The Center for Information-Development Management (CIDM)
JoAnn T. Hackos, PhD, CIDM Director
http://www.infomanagementcenter.com

If you would like to receive the CIDM e-newsletter in plain-text format, visit http://www.infomanagementcenter.com/enewsletter.shtml,
fill out the subscription form, and choose the plain-text format.

News & Events

Read more information on the upcoming Content Management Strategies 2006 conference.

Hewlett-Packard Receives the Second Annual Rare Bird Award

Read more about the Second Annual Rare Bird Award at this year’s Best Practices Conference.

International Master of Language Administration Program

The application deadline for the International MLA program, through the Copenhagen Business School, has been extended to December 15, 2005. For more information on this distance learning program and for an application, please visit their web site.

Looking for a good book?

Find some great deals on books from previous conferences.

What is CIDM?

Find out more about The Center for Information-Development Management.

Best Practices newsletter subscriptions available

Find out how to subscribe to the bi-monthly Best Practices newsletter.

Upcoming Workshops

The CIDM sponsors the following workshops:

DITA: Getting Started
Jen Linton
December 6–7
Columbus, OH

Managing Your Documentation Projects
Bill Hackos, PhD,
December 6–7
Princeton, NJ

Structured Writing for Single Sourcing
JoAnn Hackos, PhD,
January 25–26, 2006
Austin, TX

DITA: Getting Started
Jen Linton
January 31–February 1, 2006
Mountain View, CA

For more information on these and other workshops, visit the JoAnn Hackos Workshop Series web site.

Vendor Announcements

Innodata Isogen Webinar Series

Find out more information on Innodata Isogen’s webinar series on DITA.

XyEnterprise at XML 2005

XyEnterprise will be speaking and exhibiting at XML 2005 in Atlanta on November 15–17. Visit them at Booth 22 for a live demo of their S1000D implementation, and be sure to catch Jon Parsons, Director of Product Marketing, on Thursday, November 17 at 9am for his talk, “Extending the Use of XML in the Enterprise,” and look for his product presentation on authoring.

Organizational Structure—The Foundation of Process Maturity
JoAnn Hackos, PhD
CIDM Director

www.infomanagementcenter.com

In IPMM assessments that we have conducted through the CIDM, we have encountered a Level 2 or higher level organization, characterized by a centralized and professional management team. Rarely are we engaged to do an assessment for a Level 1 organization, probably because no one is yet in charge.

Read the article

More articles
Linking DITA Topics Through Relationship Tables—Kylene Bruski
Going Digital with Healthcare—Stacy Marek
Dear Gabby—Beth Barrow
Leveraging S1000D for Optimal Content Management—Jennifer Goodman

Linking DITA Topics Through Relationship Tables
Kylene Bruski
Comtech Services, Inc.

In the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), authors can link within topics to other topics through the <related-links> element. However, there are disadvantages to hard-coding links in a topic. Hard-coded links create dependencies between topics and decrease the reusability of each topic. Since the links are hard coded within the topic, they may not apply to other contexts in which the topic is reused. If a topic is renamed or if its path changes, the link will have to be recreated in all topics which reference this link. Hard-coded links result in excessive maintenance.

Read the article

Going Digital with Healthcare
Stacy Marek
codeMantra

As a document management professional, it is your responsibility to ensure that the employees within your organization are able to access necessary data. Often the struggle is accessing this information whenever the employee ultimately needs it. Accessibility is especially important in the medical world. Doctors and healthcare professionals are seeing more and more patients, and they do not have the time or resources to search for information. Whether they need to access transcripts, reports, or patient histories, they must be able to easily access information to serve the increasing number of patients.

Read the article

Dear Gabby
Beth Barrow
Motorola

In the October 2005 issue of Information Management News, Dear Gabby was asked for advice from a reader in Colorado on reorganization issues within her organization. Read the article for Dear Gabby’s response and some helpful action points to help you in your organization.

Read the article

Leveraging S1000D for Optimal Content Management
Jennifer Goodman
XyEnterprise

With the advent of Interactive Electronic Technical Publications (IETPs), companies have struggled with how to author content that can serve the needs of both electronic and print media. First generation SGML, and in many cases XML, was authored for book constructs. Although this encoding was well suited for print and PDF media, its publication orientation limited flexibility when the target was an interactive or electronic delivery channel.

Read the article

Feedback
Have you found this issue useful? Got a great story idea? We’d like your input and suggestions. Please contact lisa.finger@comtech-serv.com about any comments you may have.

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The Center for Information-Development Management
The Center for Information-Development Management (CIDM) is an organization of information-development, training, and support managers across the United States and internationally. The CIDM is directed by Dr. JoAnn Hackos, international leader in the management of the design, development, and dissemination of information to customers and employees. Under her leadership, the CIDM conducts benchmark studies among member organizations and elsewhere, sponsors research into information development and its management, and gathers and disseminates results and resources through newsletters, the web, seminars, two annual conferences, and research white papers. The CIDM facilitates the sharing of information among the most skilled managers in the information industry.

If you are interested in reading more in-depth articles, you should consider subscribing to the Best Practices newsletter at www.infomanagementcenter.com/masterindex.shtml.