Technology

Documentation Without Documents — The COIL Model

by John Thurston, PhD

Salvaging an Information Legacy

Imagine the dilemma: Your organization has developed a sophisticated computer system for entering, storing, and processing the mounds of complex data that fall under your mandate, but the hardcopy documents that contain the rules for managing the data threaten to bury your computer. Your computer system is a near relative of HAL, but your documentation could have come off Gutenberg's press.

Users of geographic information systems (GISs) often straddle these eras. The Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS) is responsible for charting Canada's extensive waters, and this work requires that they use a powerful GIS. COIL — the CHS Online Information Library — raises the documentation for CHS's GIS to the level of the application that the documentation supports.

COIL is a document management system that manages the information held in documents, rather than the documents themselves. By integrating more than 1,500 hardcopy pages of legacy documentation into one on-line information resource, COIL provides chart producers with an effective way of consulting the standards and procedures for their GIS, and of managing revisions to those standards and procedures.

An On-line Information Repository

Organizations with a wealth of legacy documents cannot afford to simply abandon them. The COIL solution converts hardcopy documentation into a platform-independent digital format, maintained at a central location, and distributed to users over the World Wide Web.

COIL moves legacy documents directly into a digital document management system. COIL provides a discriminating way to use information, because it makes repetitions and inaccuracies visible. Visibility means that irregularities are more likely to be identified and corrected.

COIL integrates, in a single on-line information repository, the documents necessary for entering hydrographic data. Users view the information in one on-line location, rather than leafing through multiple hardcopy binders and books scattered across a desk. COIL consolidates all descriptions related to a specific topic into collections of links, so that the user is not required to search for parallel descriptions in several documents.

Users responsible for entering data can view COIL on-line in one window while simultaneously working with the GIS in another window. If a question arises, the user can find the answer in COIL, then reactivate the GIS window while the answer remains on-screen. Hence, COIL's on-line availability is crucial to its use in supporting other applications.

How COIL Is Maintained

The COIL process begins with legacy documents maintained in a conventional word-processor format. These documents are divided into component information objects. Digital "bookmarks" inserted into the information objects enable hyperlinking.

Communications experts produce master documents that present embedded information objects and supply context for them. Master documents — collections of pointers to information objects, which are dynamically assembled as the master documents are retrieved — are custom designed to meet the information requirements of various audiences.

The master documents and accompanying information objects are converted to HTML format. Thousands of hyperlinks knit all of the material together. The intricacy of the embedding and linking, and of the conversion process, mean that the stability of COIL relies on rigid maintenance of a precise and predictable directory structure.

Information objects always retain their relationships to source documents so that revisions to the source can be tracked and copied, almost automatically, to the information objects. The master documents need merely to be refreshed to exhibit the revised information. When the revised word-processor files are reconverted to HTML, the updated information becomes available on-line.

COIL Concepts

Information objects are the building blocks of COIL's object-oriented information architecture. They represent the smallest self-contained pieces of information that can either be taken from source documents or generated as needed. Information objects, as the name implies, present information in discrete units, much smaller than the source documents from which they derive. They also contain data about themselves. That meta-data assists in tracking the objects, in searching their content, and in managing workflow. The characteristics of information objects greatly increase the flexibility with which information in the source documents can be used and reused in a variety of contexts.

COIL's design enables a process of distributed authoring and publishing. Authoring in COIL involves subject-matter experts creating and updating information objects. This work can be performed using skills that the subject-matter experts already possess, combined with an understanding of the methodology behind COIL. In a similar manner, those sensitive to the information needs of particular audiences can publish master documents. Information in COIL therefore develops in the hands of those responsible for it and those who understand the audiences for it.

The philosophy of distributed, modular operation on which COIL is based gives all subject-matter experts, regardless of their physical locations, the ability to participate in authoring. This bottom-up construction and the accompanying enhancement of knowledge resources is essential to any document management system, but brings particular benefits within COIL.

COIL Benefits

COIL offers distinct benefits to the development, maintenance, and distribution of CHS documents:

• Legacy documents are easily converted to fewer and more readily accessible documents that are extensively cross-referenced.
• Documents can be revised and updated in hardcopy and on-line formats at the same time from a central location.
• Interactive documents for viewing on-line can be easily designed and produced as needed to meet viewer requirements.
• All CHS employees, regardless of location, have access to the same, up-to-date information.
• Subject-matter experts can search COIL to find all material related to their areas of expertise.
• On-line procedures and standards publications can be kept open on the computer screen simultaneously with the applications that these publications support.

Future Directions

As users become more comfortable with using information in an on-line format, and secure in their acceptance of documentation that may not have a hardcopy presence, COIL could be further developed in a number of directions:

• Hardcopy source documents could become obsolete. This step would mean that updates to COIL would be made directly to the on-line version of the documents, greatly reducing information maintenance efforts.
• On-line publications could be moved further away from a structure that mimics the hardcopy precursors. The full benefits of abandoning the linearity of traditional books in favour of hypertext formats can then be explored.
• Information objects could be edited to reduce the repetitiveness that characterizes the source documents. Passages of information that are repeated in multiple source documents could be replaced by hyperlinks to a single information object.
• More documents could be converted into information objects, and more on-line publications could be created to meet the needs of other audiences.
• Standards for the on-line interface could be refined to include more styles, better and more precise links, and more creative use of graphics.

CHS has embraced the benefits of electronic navigation charts, electronic chart display and information systems, global positioning satellites, and geographic information systems, among others for managing and distributing the data it gathers and provides to various users including the public, other government departments, and private enterprises. With COIL, CHS has developed a cutting-edge solution to its document management needs. COIL can serve as a model for meeting the information needs of users of other GISs in a future where documentation does not require documents.

John Thurston is the author of several articles on COIL. He was involved in the development of the COIL concept, as well as supporting documentation and training.