It begins innocently enough. As organizations begin to manage metadata as a separate function, someone gets the bright idea of putting an internal print publication on the Web. On the surface, the benefits are obvious — reducing costs, decreasing publication cycle time, reducing support calls. What's not so apparent are the challenges of data quality, harmonization, and ownership, conversion from a static to a dynamic and interactive format, and meeting the needs of a broader audience. The ultimate challenge is implementing a system, not replicating an existing publication. Converting from a print format to an information service is not a one-shot, stand-alone project.

In this article we'll look at both the obvious and not-so-obvious challenges of migrating print publications into electronic services.

The starting point
Typically, print to Web conversion projects start with the desire to:

• reduce the costs and delays of producing an existing print publication;
• provide access to a broader audience at lower cost.

This approach has several benefits:

1. Because current costs and bottlenecks are well known, it's possible to justify the time and money to fix the problems.

2. The content already exists within an organizational framework that assigns responsibility for vetting, editing, and organizing it.

3. Some metadata exists embedded in the content or in front and back matter (i.e. table of contents, index).

4. At least one of the intended audiences is known.

This was the backdrop for two projects: one at the World Bank and the other at one of our knowledge base development clients. In both cases, project teams encountered a number of interesting challenges.

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Created on July 28, 2010 l Updated on July 29, 2010