[Sigia-l] IA research?

[gcampbel at uwo.ca]

There may be another way of thinking about this IA research issue.

Are we thinking about basic research that is intrinsically “IA research”?  Or
are we thinking about basic research from a variety of different fields that
have relevance to IA practice?

I’m not qualified to comment on intrinsically IA research: that may be
happening, or it may happen in the future, with the rise of graduate programs
in Information Architecture.  I can’t say.  But it strikes me that IA can and
does benefit from research in other fields: witness the recent entry in
InfoDesign on 10 classics in cognitive science.

To be sure, a lot of academic writing in any field is either useless to the
practitioner, or so unbearably long, boring, pretentious and mean-spirited that
it’s not worth the effort.  But there are usually needles in any haystack.  The
advantage of having academics and practitioners interact is that occasionally,
an academic will have taken the time to work through all that hay, and can
present some useful needles.

In return, the academic can get ideas and insights that are incredibly useful,
particularly in the daunting task of trying to persuade very young (17 and up)
university students that information organization and information design are
exciting and worthwhile activities.  That’s why I went to the IA Summit in
February, and why I’m anxious to go again.

Whether or not you’re getting anything from us, we’re getting LOTS from you.

Cheers,
Grant


--
D. Grant Campbell
Faculty of Information and Media Studies
University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario N6A 5B7
519-661-2111 ext. 88483
519-661-3506 (Fax)