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Case Study

Content Management:

CQ Press

Background: Washington D.C.-based CQ Press is the leader in government information publishing, providing world-class information on politics, policy, and people since 1945. CQ Press publishes magazines, books, and directories, in print and on the web, to provide unbiased coverage on national and international politics. During the past 2 years, CQ Press has concentrated on creating a suite of electronic products focused on serving the Library Reference market. These new products have used some content that was previously published in print. CQ Press's various web sites present content that originates from many sources within the organization. Because of the nature of the original content, different systems with different workflows contain and manage much of the original content.

Strategy: Really Strategies and CQ Press designed and built a Content Management System (CMS) for book content that could store relational data and XML documents in a Microsoft SQL Server database. Much of CQ Press's online content comes from its line of books. Following composition in Quark XPress, these books are converted to XML and structured in adherence to CQ Press's book DTD, which is based on an industry standard Doc Book. The book content is segmented into sections of various sizes and CQ Press assigns metadata to each section, allowing it to be individually selected for publication to CQ Press web products. A web-based interface allows users to load XML documents into the system, assign metadata, and publish the documents to a number of CQ Press web sites.

Result: The management of metadata was a difficult task and one that required a great deal of focus on the database design and specifically how and on what level XML documents were stored within the database. Additionally, other systems were in use that managed content both for print and online. How all these systems work together is a combination of technology and some simple human workflow. Editors may now select paragraph-size chunks of texts, assign metadata to that section, and select for publication to various CQ Press web products. This system provides CQ Press flexible XML-based management of their content for their editorial workflow and web publishing processes.

"Really Strategies quickly grasped the level of complexity involved with creating a system that would seamlessly work with other established environments currently in production at CQ Press. They were sensitive to our editorial and production needs, creating a system on time and within budget that can evolve based on new product choices and technological options that become available in the future."

Jennifer Ryan, Director of Electronic Development at CQ Press

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