[Sigia-l] History of "Information Architecture"

[Christina Wodtke]

I think Peter could well have called it a personal history of information
architecture, as that is exactly as it is, and as such it is both
illuminating and accurate as it is subjective and biased. All fine things
for a personal history. My personal history of IA grew out of the San
Francisco consultants of the boom, and was essentially interaction design
for the web-- navigation of content spaces. This was the days of swing
dance's second coming, and I used to joke about west coast IA, east coast IA
and midwest IA. West coast had a HCI leaning, East Coast a database leaning
and midwest was, as you see from the essay, a strong LIS leaning. Thanks to
a number of efforts that are free from regionalism (and now striving to be
free of country-ism) including not only B&A and AIfIA but IAwiki, IAslash,
and more we are see a new robust and unique IA that is more than a
derivative of a previous science and much more of its own unique and
terribly useful creature.

My personal history of was that of a kid who thought "this feels right" who
became a passionate advocate of a new discipline to a practitioner/manager
who was finally embraced her inner librarian and found it looks alot like
her inner O-O modeler and her inner HCI wonk.

In the core of "what we do" is something that is very much a single
practice, a semantic art, a content caretaking. Dewey and Raganthan are no
longer in odds in this world, but working together to sell PDAs on Yahoo!
shopping. And ain't it grand?

And personally I got to say

Wow, another book on IA?!!? How awesome! We are really a hot
ticket. In short time I think IA has become more respectable than
it's elder brother, interaction design. How did it happen?


Addendum: I unsubscribed several months ago because the list had gotten
small minded, bitter, and was constantly getting caught up in semantic
arguments and back biting and I got tired of getting pissed off five times a
day. This thread was my first one since I  resubscribed.

Glad to see things have changed.