Preference: One Big Manual or a Bunch of Smaller Ones?

[Kevin_Feeman -at- HILL-ROM -dot- COM]

All:
I got a legacy document that was over 300 pages with a lot of information. It
was once called a Theory, Installation, and Maintenance Manual. It has just
about every type of information that could ever be needed including user guide
stuff, part numbers, troubleshooting, etc. It was horribly written, designed,
and IMHO, has way to much data to be digested by an end user, in this case, it
would be a nurse or similiar type person in a healthcare facility.

After trying to figure out what this original TIM was supposed to be, I decided
to break it out into four smaller manuals: an installation manual, user's guide,
system design guide, and a troubleshooting/maintenance manual.

My question is this: Would an end user rather have a large document that
contains lots of information in a format that is hard to use and find the
necessary data, or would a user prefer to have smaller documents where the
information is easily accessible? My assumption is that the user would rather
have something that is useful, hence the small documents. Has anyone else had
experience in this, I am sure you are out there! It seems like a common problem,
at least in my experience that companies try to cram way too much information
into manuals.  But I don't have the access to end users to do a usability study
on this issue. Any thoughts, opinions, ideas?

Thanks in advance.
Kevin


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