Purpose
Information is published for several purposes.
- Public reports
- Most organisations publish reports about specific aspects of their work that
are aimed at a wide audience. These are often regular publications such as annual
summaries about aspects of the state if the organisation, but specialist reports
and press releases may be written about specific projects or topics. Brevity is
important, so the information in reports must be presented concisely and clearly.
- Executive reports
- These are usually internal reports about specific topics. It can often be
assumed that the readership is more technically sophisticated, so more advanced
analyses and presentation can be used.
- Archival and regular publications
- There is often a need to provide access to detailed data to allow further
analysis. Large tomes of tabulated data were once published by government organisations,
but such data are often provided electronically now. In spreadsheet format, users
can easily input the data into other programs
- Some organisations have a statutary obligation to provide certain information
at regular intervals (often annually). This information is usually archival, but
sometimes a 'Yearbook' is published for a wider audience and its format is therefore
closer to a report.
Care must be taken to present information clearly in all types
of publication, but it is most important for publications aimed at the general
public and least important for archival data.
Publication medium
A few decades ago, all information was published in black and white on paper.
Colour is now used more often in paper publications, but an increasing proportion
of publications are produced only electronically for display on a computer. Such
computer publications are often provided over the internet.
The use of colour in both paper-based and electronic publications makes it
much easier to present information clearly, especially in graphs.
- Quality and resolution of medium
- Colour print on glossy paper is best but expensive. Computer screens also
show colour but their resolution is relatively low — typically a tenth of the
number of 'dots' per unit area that would be used on paper. The poorer resolution
of a computer limits the type size of text and the detailed information that can
be presented, especially if the screen is small. Newsprint and many other low-quality
colour printing processes have reasonable resolution but allow only limited if
any use of colour.
- Cost
- It is much cheaper to make large quantities of information available on the
internet than on paper. However the cost of producing publications on paper tends
to ensure that they are designed better — there is a conscious effort to cut
back the presentation to the essentials that convey the intended message. It is
much harder to create a user interface that allows users to easily find information
that is published on a web site. It is critically important that web sites are
easy to navigate and the structure of the web site must be included in the cost
of publishing the information.
- Format
- Many reports are published on the internet as 'pdf' files. These are the electronic
equivalent of a series of printed pages and can be laid out with text and graphics
in the same way as is done on paper. Although pdf files are still limited by the
screen resolution of the computer, it is possible to zoom in and to print them
at much higher resolution.
- An alternative is to publish information directly as web pages that can be
viewed from a web browser. Although the ability to format such web pages was limited
until recently, web pages can now be laid out almost as flexibly as on paper (using
functionality called cascading style sheets). It is possible to make
a web site interactive, both for navigation around the site and for interacting
with individual pages. (CAST itself is an example of what is possible.)
- Archival data can be directly provided on the internet in spreadsheet format.
Alternatively, large organisations often have a web-based interface that can extract
information from a large behind-the-scenes database. For example, the United Nations
provides a wealth of information that can be accessed at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/cdb.
Some types of publication must be printed on paper in order to reach a wide
audience. In contrast, archival information is best provided on a web site because
there are likely to be few users and they will find the information most useful
electronically. However with computers and internet connections becoming more
common, a well-designed web site is becoming a very powerful and flexible way
to present information.
There is no perfect publication medium, but a well-designed
web site should be considered.