Site-Specific Content Management Systems: Analyze Before You Act

Book chapter with Susan Fowler, eds. George Pullman & Baotong Gu, Content Management: Bridging the Gap between Theory and Practice, Amityville, NY: Baywood Press, 2008, pp. 38-48.

Content management has become increasingly important for controlling the flow of data we create and use in post-industrial economies. Technical communication practitioners need to learn about content management systems and the software that supports them, but, more importantly, they need to learn how to analyze information environments and create systems that respond to the existing knowledge flow so that the CMS system is fully integrated and appropriate to the situation. Computerized document databases are not always necessary and, in fact, they can impede the human interactions that lead to knowledge generation and transfer. This paper describes three case studies of location-based, distributed, and expert (tacit) CMS in order to see what makes a content management system succeed or fail. Learning to analyze information environments will enable technical communicators to discover existing but unrecognized document databases and design systems that stimulate the flow of knowledge. For reprints, email cjohnson@njit.edu.

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