The value of content management systems for automatically repurposing content to multiple media has been discussed, debated and presented so many times in so many different vehicles that one assumes that there is nothing more to discuss—everyone is successfully doing it. Not so! Repurposing content in intelligent ways for even one additional medium is not as straightforward as it seems. In some cases people still manually cutting and pasting content into their website pages. This approach is clearly highly labor intensive and is very low tech but it provides control over the placement and editing process. The content fits the website design and navigation – although much of it may have been rewritten.

But most companies try to automate at least part of the process. Unfortunately, the results are not always optimal. Had they developed media specific metadata and, in many cases, media specifc content assets, they would have been more successful. In this age of good full-text search and sophisticated web content management tools, the basics are often forgotten. Tools are not solutions in themselves; they are only a part of a solution.

In this workshop, we will examine the challenges for multi-purposing web content, ways that some content companies are addressing these issues and how industry metadata standards have evolved/are evolving to support their efforts. Then we will brainstorm about how new “web 2.0” technolgies and user-added metadata might play a role.