[finders] The Resilience of Information Architecture

[finders at findability.org]

April 20, 2006: The Resilience of Information Architecture

http://www.findability.org/archives/000113.php

At the IA Summit, Grant Campbell and Karl Fast presented "From Pace Layering
to Resilience Theory: The Complex Implications of Tagging for Information
Architecture." I highly recommend both the paper and the slides, and if
you're really into resilience, check out Ecology and Society.

Of course, that doesn't mean I totally agree with Grant and Karl. First, I
don't agree that information architects have ignored tags. To the contrary,
IAs are infatuated with collaborative tagging. We simply haven't found many
opportunities (yet) to integrate tags into our practice.

Second, the authors commit the same sin as Clay Shirky and David Weinberger
by ignoring context. Tagging has flourished in the free-wheeling
blogosphere, but has had little traction in the realm of corporate and
government web sites where authority is an equal partner to findability. It
remains unclear when and whether tags belong in the information ecologies in
which IAs typically practice.

That said, I recently began a Web 2.0 consulting engagement in which I'll
actually get to integrate tags and taxonomies, so I'm on the hunt for
inspiration. Amazon's experiment with tags seems to have failed. Has
collaborative tagging ever been successfully integrated into the web site of
an established institution? How about examples of sites that elegantly
combine tags and taxonomies? Thanks!