Music Info Sources and Services – LIS5937

on the 2AdvancedStudios website, http://2advanced.com

The overall feel of the website is similar to a video game, which—considering the client list of 2 Advanced Studios includes Sony Computer Entertainment and Nintendo of America—makes a great deal of sense. I am curious, though, if the site has been updated in some time since the last news is from late 2009, the case studies only go up to 2007, and the portfolio goes through 2009.

on the website of Peter Morville’s consulting firm, Semantic Studios, http://www.semanticstudios.com/

Since Peter Morville is one of the leading voices in the field of Information Architecture, I’m sure his archived column is filled with important thoughts on the subject, as are his books. I’ve read David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous and Peter Morville’s Ambient Findability, and through this site was able to read the first chapter of his newest book, Search Patterns. Upon reading the chapter of Search Patterns (2010), especially the section about users utilizing different types of searching that Morville defines as “modes of ask, browse, filter, and search,” (p. 19), I realized how the apparently simple design of the IA Summit page and its connections directly addressed these possibilities.

References

Morville, P. & Callender, J. (2010). Pattern recognition. In Search patterns (pp. 12-36). Retrieved from http://cdn.oreilly.com/oreilly/booksamplers/9780596802288-sampler.pdf

on the website of the IA Summit, http://iasummit.org/napkin/

The most appropriate immediate response to this front page is happy surprise – I expect this sort of design is not only charming, but is functionally brilliant. It demonstrates what the course readings have claimed as the goal of good information architecture in terms of its easy understandability and impressively broad linking for practical usefulness. All aspects of the 2010 conference are clearly linked from one place (and with a remarkable lack of words that somehow still communicate effectively!), including podcasts of the main presentations as well as links to the entire conference content for those interested in going one level deeper. In addition, this site manages to include links to all of the social networking tools (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) and use other common technologies (Google Calendar, Slideshare, podcasts) without overwhelming the visitor. Also, the links through the conference content to http://www.boxesandarrows.com has provided me with another IA resource I am eager to explore.

on the website of the Information Architecture Institute, http://iainstitute.org/

First, in the About section (“About,” n.d., para. 1-3), the IA Institute represents itself as an organization for IA professionals in a similar way to how ALA exists for librarians or ASIS&T for information professionals. I saw the stated goal of building bridges between related disciplines, (something that many professional organizations that cross strict lines of professional definition could benefit from, like ALA!), and was immediately impressed by one practical goal of the Institute, to make information architecture resources available in many languages, (“About,” n.d., para. 3; “Initiatives,” n.d., para. 2). While this may seem a relatively insignificant task, I have to say that the field of information architecture is exciting exactly of this sort of effort – it’s clear, through the work of people affiliated with the IA Institute, that not only is something like ‘access’ a goal in a lofty way, but people are taking deliberate, practical steps to making this happen. Maybe that’s representative of the entire field, in fact, since IA seems to be driven by a way to make connections better, and facilitate delivery of whatever form of information product is wanted by a user.

Though I’ve just begun to review the resources in the Introduction to Information Architecture group within the IA Library, (“Library,” n.d.), it seems perusing these documents will be a good way to get an overview of the development of the field of IA over the last ten to fifteen years, as well as to get a better sense of the breadth of what IA might mean and/or where it intersects with other areas.

References

About. (n.d.). In Information Architecture Institute. Retrieved from http://iainstitute.org/en/about/

Initiatives. (n.d.). In Information Architecture Institute. Retrieved from http://iainstitute.org/en/about/global_initiatives.php

Library. (n.d.). In Information Architecture Institute. Retrieved from http://iainstitute.org/library/

on Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, preface and chapters 1 & 2

Morville and Rosenfeld (2006) define information architecture as follows:

(1) The structural design of shared information environments.

(2)  The combination of organization, labeling, search and navigation systems within web sites and intranets .

(3) The art and science of shaping information products and experiences to support usability and findability.

(4) An emerging discipline and community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape, (p. 4).

In trying to understand these definitions, I found the further definitions of terms, (on the following page), not nearly as helpful as I’d hoped; I still see significant ambiguity in the four definitions of information architecture. For instance, what is ‘structural design’? If it involves the way data is connected, like the connection between pages and subpages that make up a website, I see very little difference between this and the second definition, (the sum total of all elements of a website?). If the first definition is meant to be broader, I’m afraid I need an example to get a handle on it. The second definition makes perfect sense to me, although I do not feel like I have a clear understanding of the division between an information architect and web designer or programmer as regards this definition. I know that Morville and Rosenfeld address this in the chapter, though. As for the difference between the third and fourth definitions, I tend to see the difference as one (definition 3) being the collected accepted practices and experiences manifest of those doing information architecture, whereas the other (definition 4) is of the entire subject and practitioners of what can be called information architecture.

If, as Morville and Rosenfeld (2006) write, “graphic design … [and] … software development [are] NOT information architecture,” (p. 9), how can we think of an integrated library system (ILS) that has an online catalog? Is the structure of information as it is housed and connected in the relational database that makes up the guts of the ILS not information architecture? If the connection between data elements doesn’t make up information architecture, does the layout of the technical side of the ILS (buttons, menus, connections between modules)? Or, is it only the web-accessible side, the OPAC, that can be thought of in terms of information architecture? From the example related to the UN website, it seems that perhaps information architecture is concerned with a part of the work so often assigned to programmers, graphic designers, or stakeholders who want some web presence – the practical parts of knowing everything that needs to be presented to any user of the web site, (or other “shared information environment”),  and the theoretical become practical aspect of determining how to categorize and allow access to all the content and functions that must be available to users.

Even as I have difficulty in clearly understanding the depth and breadth of what information architecture is and can be, I clearly understand the importance of the work the authors call “information architecture”.  In my daily work in libraries as well as through my research efforts as a graduate student, I have—and will likely continue to—encounter difficulties in finding what I need and successfully (much less easily) navigating to correct virtual locations. Even as I have mastered the five-step navigation to confirm orders for materials in a vendor database, I feel the twinge of annoyance at time wasted following misleading paths until I finally learned the correct route and method for navigating to my goal. When on the job, this time is not only mine—wasted on pointless clicking instead of doing a more productive task—but is also my employer’s, with the associated value of my salary. In a most immediate way, I understand the value of what I think could be called good information architecture; more, I can easily see the significance in good information architecture saving substantial amounts of time and money for anyone interacting with the product of good IA.

In addition to my satisfaction—or dissatisfaction—on the user end of information architecture, I am sympathetic to the idea that we do indeed need information architects. As someone who has been responsible for a section of a departmental website—mostly for library staff and faculty use—I can certainly say that my products paled in comparison to those I expect an information architect to produce. Speaking more broadly for a second, I think it worth addressing the idea that information architecture is something everyone should engage in: this seems to be as wrongheaded as assuming everyone should be a graphic designer, everyone should be a programmer, or everyone should work the reference desk in a library. While many places—especially libraries—seems to hire for positions that have a variety of diverse work responsibilities, in practice this seems to often lead to mediocre work products. I understand the desire of an employer to fill a number of organizational holes with a single peg, but badly designed and badly organized websites, incomplete reporting based on badly written queries, incompletely informed answers to reference questions, and relatively insipid collections seem to be the real result of hiring an information architect/programmer/reference librarian/collection manager. Even if we acknowledge that the product of an information architect has many stakeholders who all can contribute to the IA work, I can see compelling, real-life reasons why dedicated information architects are valuable and necessary – especially, as Morville and Rosenfeld (2006) note, in big organizations (p. 18), (including large libraries!).

Briefly, as regards the “three circles of information architecture” (Morville and Rosenfeld, 2006, p. 25), I can already see the effectiveness of identifying content, context, and users for a webspace; in fact, though I know my efforts will result in a half-informed (at best) analysis, I have already begun reviewing the website I was recently responsible for maintaining in terms of its content, context and users.

References

Morville, P. & Rosenfeld, L. (2006). Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (3rd ed.). Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly.