Librarians and Information Architecture
Over the past couple of months I’ve started doing quite a bit of research into the field of Information Architecture (IA) and User Experience Design (UXD). I’ve been busily designing site architectures and wireframes, and talking to others about the importance of both. And in the process I’ve come to realise that librarians really should be more involved in the area.
As librarians we are involved in both finding information, and in making that information easier to find for others. We are experts at structuring information in ways that make it easy to find and use. In the legal sector particularly, we’re often also involved in creating and maintaining taxonomies which feeds back into the previous sentence – we’re structuring knowledge so that it’s easy to find and use. And both IA and UXD are about the same thing – structuring information. There is more to it than that of course, but really that’s what it comes down to.
So why aren’t there more librarians involved in the field? Is it because we lack the techy/web skills? I don’t think it’s that as I know many many librarians just as skilled in that area. So I think that maybe it’s because there is a lack of awareness that this kind of role exists. So in an attempt to rectify this fact, below is a list of resources, blogs and other websites that I’ve found incredibly useful recently.
Enjoy!
Websites
The Information Architecture Institute – a great place to start, has a fantastic library section.
UX Booth – Complete Beginners Guide to Information Architecture – Another great introduction and overview.
IA Summit – This conference was on earlier this month, but even just reading the program summaries is a good way to get familiar with the issues of interest to the community at the moment.
Grace Smith – Wireframing All in One Guide – Great intro to Wireframing
Jesse James Garrett’s IA articles and resources
Digital Web Magazine articles on IA
Boxes and Arrows – Great site covering topics such as wireframing, IA, UXD and more.
Blogs
Konigi – covers IA, UX and other topics of interest
IAPlay – UK based blog and site with links to lots of useful resources.
Adaptive Path Blog – Adaptive Path is a company that specialises in Experience Design.
Wireframes Magazine – All about wireframe techniques and tools.
User Pathways – Blog of James Kelway covering IA, UXD and general web design.
Findability.Org – Peter Morville co-wrote the original Polar Bear book, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web. Oh, and he’s a librarian
Tools/Resources
Lovely Charts – excellent web based wireframing tool, perfect for when you don’t have access to Visio or similar software.
Omnigraffle/Visio – two pieces of software that are great for creating mockups, wireframes and flow charts. If you have access to them, have a play! Otherwise it’s probably best to stick with Lovely Charts above, or simply use PowerPoint.
IA Institute list of tools - various tools, papers and presentations.
Konigi Graph Paper templates – Graph paper that’s designed for use as wireframes and storyboards.
ACIA Information Architecture Glossary – from 2000, but still a useful guide to key terms.
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2 Responses
There are more library science trained folks in the IA discipline than the broader UX field which tends to be more people with design qualifications. When it gets interesting is when you get a genius librarian working closely with a brilliant designer.
I have a library degree and briefly worked in a formal library before shifting to IA. As a manager of a large IA team I always wanted to hire more people with a library background but we didn’t get many applications, and when we did we often found the applicants lacked confidence. In seven years we managed to poach one librarian from our own (huge) library staff.
One of my team went to speak to new library graduates and was disappointed that their ambitions were to get the best library job (for the Guardian, it seemed at the time) and didn’t seem interested in taking their skills outside the library. She was baffled as she felt she was telling them about a role that was accorded more respect by organisations and certainly pays a whole lot more.
And Rosenfeld and Morville who wrote the O’Reilly IA book were librarians first, of course.
Karen, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with the lacking confidence idea.
Many highly capable librarians that I know are constantly self-deprecating about their technical skills. And I think this comes from years of IT departments ignoring or belittling the skills they have (from my experience anyway!)
I remember when I started my Masters, like all the others, I only knew of Academic and Public/State libraries and no idea that there were so many other options available for someone with info management skills. And it’s frustrating to think about now, as I would have done my degree very differently, paid attention to different aspects etc.
I’m actually both a trained librarian, and a trained web designer. So I’m trying to mesh both my skills together at the moment!