Describes the experience of the Technical Support Unit (in charge of bvs.technical.support@bireme.br) with the BVS Model Site Project in developing a pattern for publication of Virtual Health Library documents.

The constant questions sent by email to the Technical Support Unit accounted for the conduction of a quantitative and qualitative survey of the methodologic and program handbooks and manuals developed by BIREME and made available particularly in its Products Catalogue at (http://productos.bvsalud.org/html/pt/home.html).

The objective of this study was to assess a minimum of quality specified by broadly disseminated standards in Brazil (ABNT – Brazilian Association of Technical Standards) and abroad (ISO – International Organization for Standardization) in the existing documents and to indicate faults, gaps, and inconsistencies, in both the structural and f ormal aspects.
After a more detailed analysis of this scenario and the assessment of the technologic and human resources available, it was possible to define the criteria and methods that would outline the model of the ideal document for both the handbooks and manuals, be it in terms of methodology or use of the program.

The model developed comprises the entire elaboration process of the standardized documents in respect of structure and content according to international standards, in addition to conferring a proper visual identity to this kind of publication.
At the end of the process all of the documents shall be converted into PDF format and published in the Products Catalogue, maintaining a pattern also for the finalized published document.

The content of each document is planned to be converted by the XSLT file into a file in XLM format that is compatible with ISO 12083.