Rating: 
Summary: Very useful book for beginners to web site design.
Review: I found this book to be a fairly good introduction to the concepts needed for designing a web site. The discussions about navigation, labelling and searching systems may be common knowledge but they are not easily available in a concise and readable form. This book serves to put together the available information in a coherent and well-thought out format.I also liked the chapters on the process of creating an architecture for a website and then designing and developing it.
Rating:
Summary: The Perfect Guide to Understanding Information Architecture
Review: This book provides a deceivingly large introduction to the world of information architecture. It covers a concise methodology for the accessment and implementation of organization systems for the largest of information wharehouses. Furthermore, the logic of the system covered is also applicable to the everyday world of thought that occupies the space between our ears. Easy reading makes this book an information packed rollercoaster that is almost comparable to fiction.
Rating: 
Summary: Information architecture babble
Review: For a book on Information architecture to be useful it can either present new ideas or it can present old ideas in a systematic manner. I am sorry to say, but this book does not neither. No new information is presented and no attempt is made to systematize the knowledge. The book is best characterized as a monologue, with lots of repetitions and banalities, and no adequate final summary. It is, perhaps, of some value for the complete novice on web design, to show that web design can be dealt with rationally, but then again, the chances that novice designers have to deal with large websites is extremely low. There is therefore no reason to buy this book. I give it two stars because it is well written and not incoherent. But why it was written, I don't know.
Rating: 
Summary: Bottom line, don't waste $20 on this book
Review: I am in the middle of reading through this book for the second time, trying to find something that isn't common knowledge. If you are completely new to web navigation design you might benefit from this book, but the authors do not present a coherent methodology. In fact, I have found navigation design information on the web to be vastly superior to the authors' ideas. Information Architecture is an incredibly misleading title, the guts of the book deal only in mainstream navigation ideas. The authors simply summarize information that is readily available and completely avoid any innovative ideas or future directions of web site design. Bottom line, don't waste $20 on this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Good point, but bad content/space relation
Review: The book argues for web masters/designers to think more about the site and less about single pages: Navigation and terminology should be unified throughout the site, before the individual pages are detailed. If you buy this argument, you may like the book, because there are few others which stress that point. However, the advice the authors offer on how to achieve that unification is not that overwhelming - I found most of the book vague and much too long; many arguments are repeated over and over from chapter to chapter. This book makes a good point, but is not really dense with information.
Rating:
Summary: Very useful, ignore at your peril!
Review: A very good book that covers a lot of important useability ground. If only everyone who designs those big awful corporate websites had read this!
Rating: 
Summary: Don't start planning a website without this book
Review: Put simply, this book was my bible when designing my organization's website. It clearly explains the need for serious information analysis before even putting the first tag on your page. It also details the methodology for organizing content, layout, navigation, structure, and planning search protocols. But most importantly it gave me the tools to go into my "web task force meeting" (the bane of any webmaster's existence) with the tools to get everyone on the same page. The resulting website pleased everyone and thanks to this book, allowed me to design an open-ended structure for easy growth and continued web development.
Rating:
Summary: Less here than the title suggests
Review: While there is very good material here for designing the structure of a large web site, I had hoped for ideas about an information architecture that spans an organization and makes use of web tools as a communication medium between disparate databases.
Rating:
Summary: Best book currently available on designing working *sites*
Review: Plenty of books explain how to develop web pages, including pages with all kinds of bells, whistles, and gimcracks. Rosenfeld and Morville explain how to design web *sites* that work. Anyone who thinks they want to design a web site should read this book and really think about its contents; if the principles described herein were applied intelligently, the Web would be a much nicer, more interesting and more useful place.
Rating:
Summary: The way web design should happen.
Review: Rosenfeld and Morville illustrate the varying points of view that a web publication needs in order to serve its audience on all practical levels. I plan to apply this book not only for design but for organizational team building. A staple in any development library.
| 
