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1   About Readers and Manuals

Online Manuals

The term online manual is used to describe a manual that is browsed with a computer. The software for producing online manuals has been around for years, but for various reasons, few manuals were placed online. The explosive growth in the use of the Internet and intranets (private ‘Internets’), however, has provided a reliable means of making a broad range of documents accessible to anyone with a Web browser. Many organizations are now using their Internet or intranet site as the primary way of communicating information to their employees, clients, and the public. The corporate library is finally going online.

Figure 1-2: Sample online manual title page

Advantages of Online Manuals

Here are some advantages that online manuals have over print manuals:

  • Online manuals can be updated rapidly, so readers usually get up-to-date information.

  • They can be searched quickly using either the table of contents, index, or internal cross-references. These features use the ability to link from one place to another in a manual. These are sometimes called jumps.

  • You can use keyword search to locate specific topics. While it sometimes finds too many hits to be useful, with good search strategies and some understanding of search terms, such as using “and,” “or,” or “not,” you can rapidly find the information you’re looking for.

  • Many documents can be linked together—clicking on a cross-reference in one manual can take the reader directly into another manual. There is no limit to the number of manuals or amount of information that can be placed online.

  • Printing and distribution costs are reduced or eliminated.

Print or Online or Both?

For many organizations, the question is not whether to produce a print manual or an online manual, but whether to produce a print manual and an online manual. Putting your manuals online doesn’t necessarily mean that you don’t need print copies. In many cases, an online manual is provided in addition to a print manual. Perhaps as more people become computer literate and organizations network their computers, this will change and print copies will no longer be needed.

Here are some of the reasons why you may want to produce both print and online versions of your manual:

  • Not all staff use a computer, have easy access to one, or use it often enough to feel comfortable using an online manual. As a guideline, online manuals are only useful for people who work at a desk, have a computer on their desk, and use the computer regularly in their job.

  • It’s not easy to read an online manual on the bus or at home (it’s possible, just not easy).

  • It will cost too much to get everyone linked together, particularly the cost of upgrading hardware and software and the cost of retraining.

Information That Doesn’t Belong Online

Not all information belongs online. Some information is better off in print form. Here are some of the types of information that shouldn’t be online:

  • large amounts of text, such as a textbook, that must be read thoroughly (the monitor is too hard to read for extended periods)
  • any information intended for people who aren’t regular users of computers
  • procedural information that will be used away from the desk (such as anything in a field guide)
  • software installation instructions where the instructions won’t be accessible until the software has been successfully installed
  • emergency recovery procedures for recovering from a power failure

The best type of information to go online is quick-reference information—anything that the user will browse or search rather than systematically read. Internal manuals, such as policy and procedure or reference manuals, work well online because few people read them.