The emergence of Information Architecture within the information systems world has been simultaneously drawn out yet rapid. Those with an eye on history are quick to point to Wurmanâ s 1976 use of the term â architecture of information,â but it has only been in the last 2 years that IA has become the source of sufficient interest for people to label themselves professionally as Information Architects. The impetus for this recent emergence of IA can be traced to a historical summit, supported by ASIS&T in May 2000 at Boston. It was here that several hundred of us gathered to thrash out the questions of just what IA was and what this new field might become. At the time of the summit, invited to present a short talk on my return journey from the annual ACM SIGCHI conference, I entered the summit expecting little and convinced that IA was nothing new. I left 2 days later refreshed, not just by the enthusiasm of the attendees for this term but by IAâ s potential to unify the disparate perspectives and orientations of professionals from a range of disciplines. It was at this summit that the idea for the special issue took root. I proposed the idea to Don Kraft, hoping he would find someone else to run with it. As luck would have it, I ended up taking charge of it myself, with initial support from David Blair. From the suggestion to the finished product has been the best part of 2 years, and in that time more than 50 volunteers reviewed over 20 submissions. ... In this overview I am exercising my prerogative as editor to outline the Big Six issues that have dominated discussions among IAâ s since that landmark summit in Boston.

This paper examines the use of non subject related tags in three social bookmarking tools (Del.icio.us, Connotea and Citeulike). Previous studies of Del.icio.us and Citeulike determined that many common tags are not directly subject related but are in fact affective tags dwelling on a user's emotional response to a document or are time and task related tags related to a users current projects or activities. A set of non subject tags from the previous studies was used to collect posts with non subject tags from the three listed social bookmarking tools. These tags have been analysed to examine their role in the tagging process.

Social Classification or tagging is increasingly a subject of interest in library and information science (and related fields) as social bookmarking tools such as del.icio.us have become increasingly popular. Simple visualisations such as sorting tags by frequency or displaying tag clouds in which tag size denotes popularity suggest that tagging systems form interesting new taxonomies or folksonomies of related terms. This study examines these tagging systems seeking elements of convergence and divergence with traditional cataloguing and classification theory and practice. This study examines the use of unusual tags which do not fit the mould of traditional cataloguing and classification, namely, that they are not subject related. These tags include two major categories: affective (emotional) tags, time and task related tags. Examples of affective tags include interesting, fun and cool. Examples of time and task related tags include @toread, todo, and tobuy. Data has been collected from del.icio.us, citeulike and connotea via python scripts designed to gather information on specific tags or URLs. The data used for this study is part of a larger study by Kipp and Campbell (2006) examining patterns in tagging. Analysis of this data showed approximately 16% of tags were time and task related. Time and task or affective tags were located in multidimensional scaling graphs of cotag (coword) data. (Kipp and Campbell 2006) Many users of del.icio.us, citeulike and connotea appear to want to store more than just the subject of the documents they are bookmarking. Tags such as @toread, tobuy, todo, fun and cool suggest that users see their relationship to these documents in different ways. While the latter tags express an emotional connection to the document, the former show evidence of a desire to attach personal information management information to documents. This desire to combine personal information management and document classification echoes findings in document use research at Xerox in which users categorised items in order to better understand their relationship to other items and to tasks the users wished to perform. (Sellen and Harper 2002) A large part of library science research is involved in the examination of how users seek and use information. Another important aspect of this is how they relate to information. (Bates 1998, 1048) Findings from this study suggest that users relate information to time related tasks, activities and their own emotional reactions. This poster was presented at 17th Annual SIG/CR Classification Research Workshop part of the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST), November 4, 2006, Austin, Texas

Over the last two decades competition amongst organisations including financial institutions has increased tremendously. The value of information is critical to competition in different organisations. In addition, the management of cost of delivery and cohesiveness of information flow and use in the organisations continue a challenge to information technology (IT). In an attempt to address these challenges, many organisations sought various solutions, including enterprise information architecture (EIA). The EIA is intended to address the needs of the organisation for competitive advantage. This research article focused on the role of principles in the development and implementation of EIA. The article aimed to investigate how EIA could be best leveraged, exploited, or otherwise used to provide business value. The research brings about a fresh perspective and new methodological principles required in architecting the enterprise information.

7th Information Architecture Summit, Vancouver, BC, March 23-27 / This paper examines the results of a study of the three groups involved in creating index keywords or tags: users, authors and intermediaries. Keywords from each of the three groups were compared to determine similarities and differences in term use. Comparisons suggested that there were important differences in the contexts of the three groups that should be taken into account when assigning keywords or designing systems for the organisation of information.

The Japanese government has been developing infrastructures and services for electronic government since 2001. One of the challenges identified in this regard is to ensure "accessibility" or to enable everyone, including the elderly and those with disabilities, to access the infrastructures and services of an electronic government. In 2004, the JIS (Japan Industrial Standard) X 8341-3 was issued as a Web accessibility standard in Japan. It is expected to function as a basis to ensure the Web accessibility of the electronic government in the central and local governments in Japan. Recently, however, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications found a widespread lack of understanding of and respect toward the JIS X 8341-3 among the local governments in Japan. In December 2005, a study group under this ministry proposed "Operational Models to Improve Accessibility of Public Web sites" in order to supplement the JIS X 8341-3. Thus, this paper reviews the standards and policy initiatives for improving the Web accessibility of the electronic government in Japan and discusses the challenges faced by libraries to ensure the provision of access to government information in terms of Web accessibility and electronic government.

In this paper we present a method of synthesizing data in the narrative discourse of two architecture publications, in order to analyze, compare and explore to what extent it is possible to understand a book on different abstract levels using static data. The information in the book is reorganized and shown in different diagrams, used as a didactic visualization method. This allows the representation of a set of kinetic information that cannot be perceived simultaneously.

Analysis of organizational documentation, sociometric survey and observation data from a two-year field study of an R&D organization suggests that a new type of research and development (R&D) organization, called the conceptual organization, is emerging. The conceptual organization relies on and facilitates collaboration in research and development; it is based on a long-term vision that addresses large complex and challenging problems of national and global importance. Its purpose is to work towards this vision, quickly and effectively contributing to relevant dynamic knowledge bases and meeting diverse stakeholder needs with minimum capitalization and start-up costs. To achieve this, it has an explicit conceptual organizational structure in addition to a physical structure, both of which are interwoven across other external organizational and physical structures. Conceptual organizations engage scientists through the appeal of their vision and socio-technical infrastructures that encourage and facilitate collaboration. Challenges for conceptual organizations may arise due to conflicts with traditional norms and practices embedded in university and R&D settings.

In contemporary times internet plays without doubts, a key role in our life. It is one of the most effective information channels of modern economy and a powerful tool of citizen society. Great number of new web pages is created daily and the competition is becoming stronger. This Diploma Thesis is dealing with the information architecture of web pages and applications an its significance for projects of Web2.0 In our territory, "information architecture" is relatively new term and therefore, the first part of the thesis endeavor to define it. It attempts to emphasize that the web page is not a pretty picture only but it must contain well-designed communication of the goals of the page creation. For attaining them, it is essential to define precisely the expectation at the very beginning. On the other hand, it is also necessary to have on mind the web users who opens the page for to fulfill their specific needs and with their own expectations. Web page therefore should meet both the goals of the designers and expectations of the users. Further part of the introductory chapter deals with the history of the information architecture having its roots in the sphere of the information design. Beside other topics, there is discussed the work of Ladislav Sutnar, who significantly contributed to the development of this topic. The following chapter deals with the process of the information architecture design proper. It is not a detailed instruction for web page creation, but rather a description of individual steps and factors able to influence substantially the web page presentation success. The last part is devoted to the recently frequently referred phenomenon of Web 2.0. There was attempted to describe its principles and answer the question whether it is only an empty word used as attractive label for promotion of certain projects or really a new direction in the web development. Then there is discussed the influence of Web 2.0 on the information architecture and whether this topic is for its design necessary at all.

Nowadays, Intranet is an inseparable part of every company, notwithstanding of their size or field of activity. Both, in my work and personal life, I often come across different intranets that usually do not get a positive response. But they usually have the same source of the problem, which is based on their wrong structure. This is why is chose this topic for my thesis. The goal of my thesis is to perform an analysis of an existing intranet of a particular company and subsequently create a design of the intranet new structure using the card-sorting method. This thesis primarily represents a generalized method of how to proceed during such realization and which areas to look into. Theoretical part of this thesis covers the topics of information architecture and also the term intranet itself, where the most frequent issues I came across in the intranets are pointed out. Practical part covers the analysis itself, where I focus on the structure of the existing intranet, categorization of its content, connections with other systems, customization, permission management, surveys of contentment, and intranet usage. The analysis is performed manually by scanning through the existing intranet of the company, since other methods or approaches could not be applied due to technical limitations or insufficient permis-sions. Based on the outputs of the analysis, web categorizations and the card-sorting method, a design of a structure of the new intranet has been proposed. The design itself is a demonstration of the method how to approach the new intranet design.