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Information Architecture for the World Wide Web

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web

List Price: $29.95
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A Good Introduction to Information Architecture
Review: Overall, this book is good beginning read in the field of information architecture. For anyone interested in the topic, my recommendation would be to do additional reading. The authors provide an excellent bibliography at the end of the book which could serve as an excellent point of departure for the student of IA.

As far as the readibility of the book is concerned, it is easy to read although the authors bear responsibility for poor grammar and sentence structure in certain parts of the book. It is my opinion that this doesn't make the book less valuable as a resource.

A couple of other points about the book that bear mention. The authors used the example of the Henry Ford Health System Web site throughout the book. This is a great example. There are a few other examples used in the book However, I think the authors could have provided even more examples. My recommendation for the authors would be to provide the public with a second, more detailed edition. Remember this book was published in early 1998. We've come a long way since then and the web is replete with examples of good architecture.

Overall: Thumbs Up!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A good introduction to IA of content-driven website
Review: This is a good book if you want to get into the field of information architecture. It covers some of the most important issues a information architect faces on a daily basis. Some of the techniques the book talked about will be very helpful for you in a diverse web team. However, this book mostly concentrates on static-content web site. More and more of the websites today are task-driven, and this book doesn't cover much, if any, on this topic. It might have something to do with the time that this book was released, since a couple of years ago, static sites were still the mainstream.

Overall, it is a good book for a beginner. But don't forget to also pick up some books focusing on task-based webstie information architecture.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: The worst O'Reilly Book I've ever read
Review: I usually love O'Reilly - I've never bought a book of theirs that I didn't find occasion to go back to for some reason at some point before this book. Most O'Reilly books have info that you can reference when your actually working on a project - this book doesn't even prepare you for discussing the task intellegently. Granted, if this were not an O'Reilly book I would have given it 2 stars, but I have higher expectations from O'Reilly.

An example of what I found incredibly frustrating about the book follows. I expected the section called "Designing Elegant Navigation Systems" (the last section in the chapter "Designing Navigation Systems") to contain advice about what to include in the navigation system and suggestions for designing navigation systems. I got one page of babeling that included sentances like "Based on the hierarchy, you will be able to select key pages (or types of pages) that shoudl be accessible from every other page on the web site." At no point to they suggest what sorts of pages should be accessible. They don't mention the ones that should be obvious: feedback, home, and search; nor do they discuss if or when it's desirable to have one link from each major subsection in the global navigation.

The whole book was disapointing to me, I don't really feel that I learned much of anything on the subject. I knew nothing of the field to start with, so I feel I should have come away from any well written book on the subject with some comprehension of the field.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Heavy-duty Web design
Review: This book presents a thorough introduction to the concept of information architecture for Websites. Written by librarians who specialize in information retrieval, this book explains why some sites are easy to navigate and others are impossible. It explains the steps necessary to plan the architecture of a Website, especially a large Website that will be created by a team of people rather than an individual. The authors suggest techniques for making clear to clients the importance of information architecture before work on the site actually begins. The book covers navigation systems and labeling systems (choosing useful names for links). It also contains a very thought-provoking chapter on search systems and factors that a Web manager should consider before choosing or building a search engine for a site. I would recommend this book to anyone in charge of planning or maintaining Websites, especially large Websites.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Don't waste your time
Review: I expected more from Peter.

The book shows that many still don't know what an information architecture is and how to use it.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not too impressed
Review: I was disappointed in this book, particularly because it has the O'Reilly imprint. It's too vague to be of much use, I thought. Not bad, but not very helpful, either.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great foundational piece!
Review: Rosenfeld and Morville's book makes, perhaps, its greatest contribution by presenting its potentially intimidating subject in a way that makes it accessible to virtually any reader. This is no small task and speaks as much about the authors' gift for writing as it does about their technical knowledge. In my office, this book has become foundational reading and I recommend it highly to colleagues or anyone interested in the presentation of information through the web.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Execllent for every new hand on web design
Review: The book gives very detail explanation how a good web page is and presents all material in systemtic ways without include a lot of jargon. The case is usefull and well link with the topics of the book. It is a good reference book for person who would like to develop a website by his own.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Still handy, and still unique
Review: There's a reason all the famous web-design folks recommend this book. It's still about the only book that addresses the design of _information_, and it still does the job very well.

O'Reilly has become justifiably famous with its user-friendly technical volumes, but this one is a bit of a departure. There isn't anything in here about how to code anything; there are no handy lists of functions or commands for easy reference. What there is is a thorough, focused but wide-ranging discussion of the issues facing someone who wants to make electronic information usable and accessible via a website.

(That includes database design, by the way. There isn't all that much detail and it's in the context of making websites searchable, but there's good discussion of e.g. controlled-vocabulary terms and how users actually look for information.)

The overall approach is refreshingly big-picture: the authors emphasize, for example, navigation _systems_ and labelling _systems_ (rather than just "labels"), and they devote an entire chapter to "conceptual design." No wonder, three and a half years after its initial publication, it's still the standard reference work in a field that usually puts books out of date overnight.

And no wonder Jakob Nielsen thinks well enough of it to write the foreword. If you know who Nielsen is, you probably already have this book; but since none of the information on this page credits his contribution, it can't hurt to let readers know.

Ostensibly devoted to websites but generally applicable to any context in which electronic information has to be organized, this book should be somewhere on the shelf of every IT professional. If you like Steve Krug's _Don't Make Me Think!_ (as I do), you'll like this one too -- maybe better. (Krug's book is a good one to show your boss; this is a good one to read whether your boss sees it or not.)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Rethink your website!!
Review: This book is an excelent tool if you are creating or redesigning your web site. You will not read only about how a site can get a great apearence, but you wll know how to make it work better.


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