[Sigia-l] IA and medium

[Eric Reiss]

I think Christina’s raised an interesting point in that a good web IA
may make a lousy librarian and vice versa. There are a lot of
problems related to browser-based information categorization and
display that are fairly unique in nature. I think the main difference
between our business and that of anyone else who must categorize
information (or sort things) is that we can easily replicate
individual units ad infinitum. This, in turn, allows us to create
several different categorization systems simultaneously.

For example, as a child, I collected baseball cards. I entertained
myself by creating different sorting systems: by team, by position,
by ERA/batting average, by age, etc. But...I could only have one
system in operation at any given time since I only had a single set
of cards with which to work.

As I see it, the most creative aspect of our job deals with
discovering new (and hopefully more convenient) ways to categorize
information that has traditionally been arranged in only one way. And
by offering visitors a choice of categorization schemes, one would
assume that we can better meet their immediate informational needs.

Best regards,
Eric

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eric reiss
principal
e-reiss aps
copenhagen, denmark
http://www.e-reiss.com
office: (+45) 39 29 67 77
mobile: (+45) 20 12 88 44
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