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Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery
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Author: JoAnn T. Hackos
List Price: $39.99
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 0471085863
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons (28 February, 2002)
Edition: Paperback
Sales Rank: 86,090
Average Customer Rating: 4.36 out of 5
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Customer ReviewsRating: 5 out of 5
Practical and Friendly
Great overview if you are beginning. And if you are in the middle of a content management project now, solid details and examples, with advice distilled from dozens of big consulting projects. And, if you want to convince your boss that your organization needs to do CM, this book shows you how to make the business case.Hackos urges you to start by analyzing what your customers, staff members, and authors really need, creating an Information Model to serve them, defining: * Dimensions (attributes) such as creation date, version number, language * Information types (equivalent to a DTD or schema) such as procedure, conceptual overview, reference * Content units (equivalent to XML elements, or OO objects) such as steps, captions, product names She urges a top down approach (from customer needs to information types). But she recognizes that, at times, we must also work from the bottom up (identifying information types that we already have). The problem with bottom feeding, she suggests, is that a lot of the old information serves no one. If you want to get a sophisticated overview of content management, then, look to this book for a friendly guide. If you need a refresher on some aspect of single sourcing, or you want some ammunition for a debate on your team, skim through the guidelines and examples. And if you need to win over a manager to single sourcing, I would say: Use this book to present your case.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Provides a good start, but.....
At first reading, this book was good, but I later found myself confused about the processes Hackos describes. The first chapter is strong in that it provides an overview of the five phases of a content management project, complete with lists of deliverables. The book includes a number of process checklists in the appendices.When I see a book that lays out a process structure in the beginning, I expect the table of contents to follow that structure. This book fails to do that. It can be difficult in the first reading to know what phase of the process is described in any particular chapter. The last two phases of development--the pilot project and the roll out--are not described outside the introductory chapter. Since the content management field is apparently devoid of a conventional vernacular, authors get to invent their own terms for things. I had to read several chapters many times to understand what Hackos means by "information type" and "content unit." It was also difficult to see where metadata fits into the picture. Her information model shows an information repository containing "modules of content", such as reports or manuals. Each module of content may contain one or more "information types", such as letters or recipes. Each information type is constructed of "content units", which can be recipe ingredients or procedure steps. But, you start by defining "dimensions", which become retrieval metadata for the information types. A dimension is essentially an enumerated data type with a set of discrete values. Once you define the dimensions, you can then define information types and, at the lowest level, content units. These dimensions are translated into metadata attached to "modules of content". This is what confuses me. As described in the book the metadata is attached to the highest level of document in the repository, but not the lowest level of content unit. Apparently, the sole function of metadata advocated here is to aid user-level searching and retrieval, and not to support authoring workflow. I find this a significant shortcoming. In summary:
Strengths: Strong focus on the end user, case studies, process not overly detailed, a chapter on making a business case, appendices full of checklists, & a good introduction. Weaknesses: Book doesn't follow process flow, the jargon is difficult to grasp, reuse mechanisms are not well covered, uses a weak metadata model, and really only details the first three phases of a five-phase process. Recommendation: A number of people I work with like this book, so maybe I'm just cranky. I would check out the comtech-serv.com website where Hackos lays out the process for you and provides some detail. You should be able to get a feel for her style and process there.
Rating: 4 out of 5
an extremely helpful book - deceptively simple in style
This book is a great introduction to how smart design of content and its delivery can facilitate its reuse in an organization. The author has a lot of experience and lays out strategy and advice in a very straightforward manner without jargon. Her examples are simple and nicely revealed and formatted. She always has the customer in mind. Throughout the book, one always has the sense of a person behind the deliveries obtaining benefit (this is so often missing, which is why so many of these type of endeavors fail). The book reveals the soup-to-nuts considerations for anyone wanting to create and manage an effective information delivery project.
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