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Identical vs derivative reuse

Ann Rockley has written an article on identical vs derivative reuse. To quote:

Reuse can bring many content benefits to an organization including increased productivity, reduced costs, greater consistency, more usable content. But is reuse really realistic? Don't you need to modify content for the channel (e.g., web, print) or the audience (e.g., region, product).

When content is reused identically, it is reused without change. Derivative content is reused with change, content stays related to the original component.

This is always an interesting topic, and while I agree with the definitions in this article, I would question that even 15% of content can be reused. Also, the idea of "derivative reuse" is optimistic using most commonly available CMS products. Still, this is topic always worth discussing.

(I wrote an article on this a while back.)

Posted by jamesr on October 20, 2007 07:25 PM
Categories: Content management