Barbara has been a professional writer since 2004. In addition to excellent writing skills, she has strong organizational aptitude and strives for continuous self-improvement.
Professional Experience
Freelance Writer
2014 to present
- Published at the national level in a Chicken Soup for the Soul compilation and Farm and Ranch Living magazine.
- Wrote newsletter articles for non-profit organizations.
Allscripts Healthcare, Raleigh, NC
Technical Writer
July 2004 to present
- Writes client-facing feature guides, user guides, installation instructions, and release notes for the Allscripts Practice Management application.
- Maintains online Help for Allscripts Practice Management.
- Works with business analysts, solutions managers, quality assurance engineers, and software engineers to gather and process information relevant to clients.
- Handles all aspects of release coordination, often for simultaneous releases, in an agile development environment.
- Uses DITA, Oxygen XML Editor, and Ixiasoft DITA CMS for structured authoring and output generation. Formerly used Structured FrameMaker for authoring.
- Participates in an editorial peer-review process.
- Worked previously with several other Allscripts products, including electronic medical records and clinical decision support applications.
Sapphire Technologies, Research Triangle Park, NC
Technical Writer (contract) on assignment at IBM
January 2004 to July 2004
- Documented the Enterprise Generation Language (EGL) component of the IBM WebSphere application.
- Used ID Workbench, Epic Editor, and DITA for structured authoring.
- Indexed the 776-page EGL Reference Guide.
- Created task models that outlined EGL application development procedures.
Education
Undergraduate. B.A. Computer Science, Wilkes College (now Wilkes University), Wilkes-Barre, PA
Continuing Education. Article Writing; Foundations of Creative Nonfiction; Writing Personal Essays; Write for Magazines (self-study format); 4-Week Journalism School (self-study format); Freelance Writing for Beginners; Introduction to Editing; ABCs of Copyediting (correspondence course); Technical Writing: Fundamentals, Intermediate, and Advanced
Memberships
Triangle Association of Freelancers