Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld

This book is an introductory text on information architecture for the internet.  The information in this book clarified and defined many ideas from this emerging profession.  It is quite relevant to librarians.  According to this book 40% of information architects come from a library science background.

Many of the concepts that were being described came right out of library school.  I remember reading about search engines, indexes, and classification in my cataloging class.  This book takes it one step further and describes how information on the web is turned into metadata, controlled vocabularies, and labeling systems. It also describes how indexes and search engines are designed.

It is more than just information systems, it is also the language of the nonvisible parts of websites.  It describes things which a chief information officer or a senior developer might talk about; web blueprints, taxonomy, wireframes, and content maps.  This is the planned architecture of enterprise websites.

The reader also learns the vocabulary and professional interests in education, strategy, and selling the profession.  Reading this was eye opening.  It gave me a description of how enterprise websites are created like evolt.org or the MSWeb intranet.

After reading this, I am beginning to get a context of how complex websites are put together.  There is the content strategist who puts in all the different kinds of content in the site, and the information architect who creates the framework on which an enterprise website is built..

This was an incredibly useful book.  It helped me understand the internet in ways which I had not done before.  I would highly recommend this to people who are interested in technology.

Daily Thoughts 1/6/2010 (Information Architecture, Google Docs, library songs)

"Cutting and Holding the Feather" from: Johann Stäps: Selbstlehrende Canzleymäßige Schreibe-Kunst. Leipzig 1784

Daily Thoughts 1/6/2010

This morning, I read some more of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web.  I was reading about researching the site architecture for as site.  The writers were writing about usability and gathering information on websites.  They briefly wrote about tracking website statistics and how to do user surveys. On the way home, I read about the context of strategy in web sites.  This seemed a bit nebulous to me. They used terms like metaphor and imagery.  It wasn't concrete enough for me.

Google Docs can be used to make web surveys.  How to make Forms, Surveys, and Quizzes in Google Docs http://google.about.com/od/toolsfortheoffice/ss/forms_googledoc.htm  It is a very nice

I spent some time talking about databases with a colleague.  I also did some weeding in the paperbacks today.  We are thinking of working on labeling and inventorying the storage area or mezzanine.

In the afternoon, I wrote the bi-monthly report with a colleague for the collection development and technical services department. We usually include some marketing materials with the report as well as statistics on items being added and deleted from the collection.  I still plan on doing some more weeding in the storage area or mezzanine.

I have been reading a little bit more of I live in the future and here's how it works.  Nick Bolton describes a new type of consumer that is more driven by immediacy than quantity or quality.  His term is consumnivore.  I find it to be mildly perturbing.  The consumnivore seems to graze in the land of social networks where the popular material is touted as the most buyable.  It reminds me of the idea of "romantic consumption", where positive sensual emotions are tied to buying consumer goods. It is a bit too hedonistic for my liking.


Web Bits

Songs about the library.
http://www.blisspix.net/library/songs.html

Wikipedia songs that retell a work of literature
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_that_retell_a_work_of_literature

Daily Thoughts 1/1/2011 (Information Architecture, Meetups)

Jean Miélot at his desk, 2nd Half of the 15th Century


Daily Thoughts 1/1/2011


Happy New Year to all of you reading this blog.  Today, I resolve to make my refrigerator project a success.  For the last four months, I have been making notes here and there on a project and adding it to a file on my computer in a haphazard way.  It is slowly forming into an amorphous something.  It is enough of an amorphous something now to maybe put it up on a website.  It is the old throw it against the wall and maybe it will stick idea.  I am pondering it every day.

I read some more of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web.  The author is writing about different ways to organize information in a web site; topic, task, audience, metaphor, and hybrid methodologies.  Information organization is always somewhat political in nature.  It is a matter of choice which information gets primacy inside a website.

I am planning on going to the First NYC Digital Show and Tell for eBooks, Ereaders, and Digital Content Publishing on Janurary 20, 2011. http://www.meetup.com/eBooks/calendar/15850362/

I also might try and go to the January 10,  2011, Tech Meetup if anything opens up. http://www.meetup.com/ny-tech/calendar/15792754/

Right now, I feel a bit tired.  I tried all I could do for where I worked, but it in the end may not make a difference.  I have to think of other things.
If you want to check your site for broken links, Xenu's link checker works quite well. http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html%20