COLUMN | STAFF WORKS
BY CONSTANCE PARADISE, AIHA® DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS AND PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
Staff Works
The Synergist® Goes Digital
AIHA has always looked for ways to improve services, offer more value, and
keep up with the latest developments in
best practices for membership associations. The prolonged economic slump has
not changed our approach, but it has
made our search for efficiencies and improvements to services more challenging.
Souped-Up Search and Other
Benefits
Readers may recall that AIHA offered a
page-turning digital Synergist a few
years ago. Unfortunately, that version
was characterized by pages that loaded
very slowly, which diminished their us-ability. Texterity’s product, in contrast,
loads much more quickly than other digital solutions, and it does not require
users to download a plug-in or other
software.
The Texterity interface also features
an easier, more intuitive navigation.
When you open a digital Synergist, the
table of contents displays on the left side
of your screen. Clicking on any article
title will take you directly to that article.
Arrow-shaped buttons at the top and
sides of the screen allow you to move
forward or backward through the issue.
Readers who prefer the static PDF version can easily download a PDF by
clicking on a download icon. The new
digital Synergist also gives staff the capability to create a full multimedia experience by including additional content
that could not fit into the print version.
Look for us to take advantage of this
feature in the future.
The new digital Synergist
allows users to search for
articles by keyword
across the publication’s
digital archives.
Perhaps the most important feature of
the new digital Synergist is its search
capabilities, which allow users to search
for articles by keyword across the publication’s digital archives. Texterity is
converting Synergist back issues into
digital editions starting with the June/July
2009 issue. Readers who access the current digital Synergist online can search
by keyword across all of those issues.
That robust search feature will become
even more valuable for members as we
build up our digital archives.
Community Value
Digital editions are one of the latest trends
in publishing. In recent years, many membership associations have moved to digital
publishing—not to replace their print publications, but to enhance them.
That is AIHA’s intent as well. Members who enjoy reading the hardcopy
version of The Synergist should rest assured that The Synergist will remain in
print. The Synergist is members’ number
one source of information about the
OEHS professions and news about AIHA.
No other AIHA communication vehicle
regularly arrives in members’ mailboxes,
and the kind of community engendered
by a high-quality magazine has a value
that cannot be described in terms of dollars alone.
We thank our digital edition partners,
SiteHawk and Spiramid, for helping us
to enrich that community with a top-notch digital edition. Please let us know
what you think by e-mailing Synergist
staff at synergist@aiha.org.
ConstanceParadise,CAE,isAIHA’sdirectorofcom-munications and product development, and editor in
chief of The Synergist. She can be reached at (703)
846-0742andcparadise@aiha.org.
Synergist Web Exclusive
Don’t miss Aaron Trippler’s “Washington
Insider” column in the Synergist Web
Exclusive section of the AIHA website.
This month, Aaron discusses the OSHA
budget, the jobs bill in Congress, safe
patient handling, and more. Members
can access Aaron’s column at
www.aiha.org/membercenter/Pages/
SynergistWebExclusive.aspx.
