Going to Camp

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My summer is about to end.  The evenings of unchecked sloth will be replaced by paper writing and lecture watching, even as the weather continues to tell me otherwise.  *Sigh*  I suppose it’s time.  But, I do have one last hurrah planned before the great hunkering down.  On Sept. 27 and 28, I’m going to InfoCamp in West Seattle.  InfoCamp bills itself as an “interdisciplinary un-conference” where students and informational professionals get together to share ideas and find out about each other.  Its organizers do not pick the presenters.  Instead, participants sign up to speak about whatever topics interest them.   Through a wiki, participants can list topics they are interested in hearing about, as well as sign up to give a presentation.  It looks like there will be quite a bit about information architecture and the semantic web.  This event sounds like a lot of fun; I can’t wait!

Finding

Last week was a busy one for me in the world of information science.  At work, I began a project that involves designing a SharePoint library for the university’s policy documents.  I’ve been reading up on the search and taxonomy capabilities of SharePoint, while trying to get my site management sea legs.  SharePoint offers a lot of customizable views and search filters that should appeal to a lot of our users.

Also, I finally got Peter Morville’s book, Ambient Findability, from the library last week.  Ever since I discovered his blog called Findability.org, I’ve been meaning to see what he has to say about web navigation in the world of information overload.  Morville’s ideas are bounded by Moore’s Law, which acurately predicted an exponential explosion in electronic processing power, as well as Mooer’s law, which states that “an information retrieval system will tend not to be used whenever it is more painful and troublesome for a customer to have information than for him not to have it.”  Given the reality of both laws, Morville describes the various ways that we navigate the online world (which he also explains is becoming increasingly intermingled–or, as he says “intertwingled”–with the physical world) and find the information that we need.  So far, I haven’t encountered much in the way of concrete design or navigation solutions, but then again, I have a couple chapters left to go.

I also decided to check out the lastest developments in the Library of Congress’ upcoming adoption of RDA (stands for Resource Description and Access, the new cataloging rules that are slated to replace AACR2).  Apparently, LOC, the National Library of Medicine and the National Agricultural Library are recommending that RDA be more extensively reviewed and studied before it is adopted.  Hmmm.  I must admit that I haven’t had a chance to look over the proposed RDA rules yet.  Another something, something to add to my list.

Findability Rears Its Head

A month or so ago I spent a few hours helping a local non-profit  develop some prototypes in preparation for the redesign of its website.  I thought this would be a good chance to expand my embryonic knowledge of information architecture, see how IA decisions are made within an organization, and help out some nice peeps at the same time.  I ended up being pretty frustrated with my research and didn’t have a lot of solid advice to offer the folks I was working with.

Fast forward to today.  I’m at the copier, snatching somebody else’s copies by mistake, when I notice that I am holding a comprehensive bibliography of web design resources.  Turns out, two of the librarians at work are planning a redesign of our portal page and found this great resource from the University of Minnesota Duluth.  Why could I not have stumbled across it six weeks ago?  Because (1) knowing little about IA, my initial search strategy was flawed; and (2) the serendipity gods smiled on me six weeks too late.

One of the items on the bibliography is Peter Morville’s blog called findability.org.  For anyone interested in taxonomy, controlled vobabularies, folksonomies or IA, I would highly recommend checking it out.  In fact, I’m off to read one of Morville’s posts about folksonomy innovations at Buzzillions right now. I’ll let you know what I think.