[Sigia-l] JASIST Special Issue, IA

[Richard Hill]

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
JASIST
VOLUME 53, NUMBER 10

[Note: URLs for viewing contents of JASIST from past issues are at the 
bottom.  Immediately below, the contents of Bert Boyce's "In This Issue" 
and part of Andrew Dillon's introduction to the special issue on 
Information Architecture has been cut into the Table of Contents.]

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  SPECIAL TOPIC ISSUE: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
  Guest Editor: Andrew Dillon

  Information Architecture in JASIST: Just Where Did We Come From?
  Andrew Dillon
  Published online 17 May 2002
  821
In the present issue is a collection of articles representing a spectrum of 
perspectives from academics and practitioners, practical and theoretical, 
all offering one angle on issues collected under the label information 
architecture. In it you will find considerations (not definitive 
statements) of important contemporary issues that are being shaped even as 
we think, from
curricular (Latham) to method (Large et al.); from conception (Haverty) to 
case (Hauck and Weisband); from theory (Toms) to practice (Burke); with 
data (Cunliffe) and speculation (Rosenfeld). Even this carving up is 
partial, because several articles cross several of these divides.
         The articles are not the definitive word on IA; it would be 
impossible to expect any collection to be such given the dynamism of the 
field. But these articles do offer a valuable snapshot. This is IA as seen 
by a variety of thinkers in the early 21st century. No doubt all will think 
again about these issues and evolve a more refined perspective, but these 
articles do represent, in current parlance, a sense of Big IA and what the 
field covers. Drawing in people from outside the normal community of ASIST 
conference or IA summit attendees, I believe these articles represent a 
landmark effort, and there is no doubt in my mind that IA represents an 
exciting and important mix of ideas and perspectives that can serve to 
bridge traditional divisions in the information studies disciplines. 
Regardless of how the field eventually becomes labeled, the issues IA has 
brought into relief must be addressed, and in so doing, such addressing 
will help shape the future of information science. Predicting the future is 
a thankless task, but the opportunity to stand still and survive as a 
practitioner or theoretician has passed - the information domain will be as 
much the province of architecture as the physical world, and those that 
will shape the new spaces will impact humankind on a level that will prove 
beyond the reach of physical architecture. This is only the beginning - get 
involved.

  Information Architecture: Notes Toward a New Curriculum
  Don Latham
  Published online 30 May 2002
  824

  Information Architecture for the Web: The IA Matrix Approach to Designing 
Children's Portals
  Andrew Large, Jamshid Beheshti, and Charles Cole
  Published online 20 May 2002
  831

  Information Architecture Without Internal Theory: An Inductive Design 
Process
  Marsha Haverty
  Published online 17 May 2002
  839

  When a Better Interface and Easy Navigation Aren't Enough: Examining the 
Information Architecture in a Law Enforcement Agency
  Roslin V. Hauck and Suzanne Weisband
  Published online 14 May 2002
  846

  Information Interaction: Providing a Framework for Information Architecture
  Elaine G. Toms
  Published online 14 May 2002
  855

  Designing a New Urban Internet
  Lauren Burke
  Published online 11 June 2002
  863

  Information Architecture for Bilingual Web Sites
  Daniel Cunliffe, Helen Jones, Melanie Jarvis, Kevin Egan, Rhian Huws, and 
Sian Munro
  Published online 9 May 2002
  866

  Information Architecture: Looking Ahead
  Louis Rosenfeld
  Published online 11 June 2002
  874

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[Note: The ASIST home page 
<http://www.asis.org/Publications/JASIS/tocs.html> contains the Table of 
Contents and abstracts from Bert Boyce's "In This Issue" from January 1993 
(Volume 44) to date.

The John Wiley Interscience site <http://www.interscience.wiley.com> 
includes issues from 1986 (Volume 37) to date.  Guests have access only to 
tables of contents and abstracts.  Registered users of the interscience 
site have access to the full text of these issues and to preprints.]


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