“(…) there are two issues here that most of us are neglecting to consider in our endless discussions: career lifecycle and domain lifecycle. These are the East/West aspect of all of our debating. If you leave these out of the discussion, you can’t really understand the debate, or the people debating, or what it should mean to you.” – (Louis Rosenfeld) courtesy of sly@TWTTR

“What war is the field of information architecture fighting? The war we still seem to be fighting is the war against information architecture itself as a valid concept, as a meaningful part of design practices. (…) The discipline of information architecture and the role of the information architect will always be defined in conjunction with one another. As long as you have information architects, what they do will always be information architecture. (…) There are no information architects. There are no interaction designers. There are only, and only ever have been, user experience designers.” Great point-of-view. – (Jesse James Garrett)

“As it seems to be a common pattern with me in recent times, this post has been long in the making and even longer in the thinking. And I’m not done yet, really, but since the 10th IA Summit in Memphis, Tennessee, seems to have expanded our horizons in novelty ways, I have a feeling the times are ripe for a first attempt at my tuppence on the subject. What subject? IA, IxD, UX, and where we stand, of course. And say thanks to JJG.” Provocative, deep thinking, and milestone article for the discipline of information architecture. Congrats Andrea! – (Andrea Resmini – FatDUX blog)

“Can we use the nuggets buried in research to generate interaction between academics and practitioners? Here’s an idea: at the next IA Summit, perhaps we could dedicate a half day or full day precon to workshopping the ideas in ASIS&T’s top research papers from the preceding year.” – (Louis Rosenfeld)

“Spring 2009, Volume 1 Issue 1 of the Journal of Information Architecture will be available to all for download in PDF format as either individual articles or as a single complete publication on March 31st 2009.” – (About the JoIA)

Great initiative of European Information Architects Andrea Resmini, Dorte Madsen, Katriina Byström, Nils Pharo, Stanislaw Skorka and Luca Rosati. – More coming soon!

“(…) we definitely do have a phenomenological definition of IA: IA is what has been going on in the self-identified IA community of practice (and related academic oases) in the last 10 years or more. (…) the upcoming peer-reviewed scientific Journal of Information Architecture, due in Spring 2009. For the discipline to mature, the community needs a corpus, a defining body of knowledge, not a definition.” – A big applause for this initiative. Keep up the good work! (Andres Resmini, Katriina Byström and Dorte Madsen – ASIS&T Bulletin Feb/Mar 2009)

“The official IAI announcement will say Because of personal and professional reasons, our fellow board member Peter Boersma has decided to resign his position on the IAI board. Here’s some explanation around that phrase.” (Peter Boersma – BEEP)

“Web analytics offer quantitative insight into user behaviour. They can be used to benchmark site performance and report to management. But, because web analytics data tells what people do on a web site, analytics data should be used to inform and direct more qualitative user research methods such as focus groups or usability tests that tell us why they do what they do. More importantly, you can use the natural interest people have in web metrics to introduce the more qualitative measures into the business overall.” (Hallie Wilfert – FUMSI) – courtesy of thehotstrudel

“This paper surveys information architecture in the context of digital libraries. Key concepts are defined as well as common attributes of information architectures in general. Communications standards (…) are explored, as well as the history of information architecture and related models. A number of digital library projects are analyzed with a focus on their distinct architectures. The key role of information architecture in the design and development of the twenty–first century digital library is detailed throughout.” (Scott J. Simon – FirstMonday 13.12)

“Information architecture (IA) means so much to our projects, from setting requirements to establishing the baseline layout for our design and development teams. But what does it mean to your clients? Do they see the value in IA? What happens when they change their minds? Can IA help manage the change control process? More than ever, we must ensure that our clients find value in and embrace IA—and it’s is our job to educate them. If we want our customers to embrace IA, we must help them understand why we need it. IA is about selling ideas effectively, designing with accuracy, and working with complex interactivity to guide different personas (potential customers) through website experiences.” (Keith LaFerriere – A List Apart)

“The EuroIA Network Initiative aims to facilitate the development of a stronger network between European information architects. An large effort is already being made through international orginasitations such as the Information Architecture Institute, it’s European chapter and the local groups. The initiative wish to contribute to this effort, pushing the objectives even further, among other things, by the formation of a legal entity which can contain and support a range of important activities to strengthen our industry and it’s position in Europe.” (Ning network)

“This News Network is designed to help people track and share news about IA.” (Jan Hot Strudel Jursa)

“What was intriguing about this particular conference was the diversity of people, both in professional and geographic terms. There were graphic designers, interaction designers, technical leads, managers, and oh yes… ‘information architects’. What was interesting about the attending information architects was that they came from so many backgrounds to become an information architect. There were actual classically trained architects that became IA’s, there were designers that were IA’s and so on.” (Adam Kallish – Spill)

“The speakers pushed the boundaries of what it means to design complex information spaces of all kinds. We can all expand our practice by absorbing their experiences and ideas. In cooperation with the IA Institute, we’re happy to bring you recordings of most conference talks. We hope you enjoy listening to nearly the entire conference via these recordings.” (Jeff Parks – Boxes and Arrows)

“(…) one of the major challenges facing small public libraries today: rethinking the user experience to help bridge the digital and physical realms while enabling library administrators to better respond to patrons’ changing needs.” (Michael Magoolaghan – ASIS&T Bulletin Oct/Nov 2008)