Guest Editors' Introduction: Rationalizing and Rhetoricizing Content Management

• Published in: Technical communication quarterly 2008-01, Vol.17 (1), p.1
• Main Authors: Pullman, George, Gu, Baotong
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Business; Collaboration; Communication Research; Computer Software; Content management software; Design; Educational Technology; Evaluative Thinking; Information management; Knowledge management; Management Systems; Pullman, George M; Researchers; Teaching Methods; Technical communication; Technical Writing; User needs; User Needs (Information); Writing
• ISSN: 1057-2252; 1542-7625

The industry of information management and distribution is increasingly interested in CMSs, as witnessed by the ninth annual Content Management Strategies conference in 2007 (http://www.cm-strategies.com); the presence of numerous consulting firms offering advice about how to manage information assets; and a rising tide of books devoted to teaching people how to use XML to "datatize" text, separate form from content, and make it possible to search, sort, and repurpose information on the fly. Developing a Collaborative Single-Sourcing Curriculum, she examines ttiree prominent approaches of structured writing: the project-based, bottom-up approach by Kurt Ament, who outlines methods of modular writing for 19 different modules; the information modeling approach proposed by Ann Rockley, who adopts a bidirectional approach to structure by considering both high-level analyses and explicit guidelines; and the tiered-information approach by JoAnne Hackos, who developed a theory of structure that consists of three components: an Information Model, information types, and content units.