At its core, information architecture is about users, context, and content. By answering questions regarding these issues your MyLibrary implementation will not only be functional. It will be understandable to your intended audience, serve a meaningful purpose, and contain relevant content. Information architecture is the result of a planning process. It is about "On your mark. Get set. Go!" not "Fire, and then aim." This essay elaborates on these ideas and outlines some of things you need to think about as you begin to implement any information system, not just MyLibrary.

Information architecture is often illustrated using a Venn diagram depicting three interlocking circles representing users, context, and content. Users are the intended audience of an information system, context is the reason the systems exists, and content is the data/information the system has to communicate. For good information architecture to take place, a concrete understanding of an information system's audience, purpose, and data/information is necessary. This is like the architecture of buildings, where an understanding of who is going to live there, what the building is for, and what it will contain must be outlined before construction can begin.

At the risk of pushing the metaphor too far, the result of information architecture is a "blueprint illustrating the framework" which you will fill with content, organize with controlled vocabularies, hang site-wide navigation, and make browsable as well as searchable. If you do this with an eye to satisfying the expressed needs and desires of your users as well as your hosting institution, you will end up building something usable (not just functional), and they will come.

The first step in designing your information architecture is answering questions regarding users. You need to define the primary audience of your information system, build relationships with them, and learn what they need and desire.

Defining your information system's primary audience is easier than you may think. In a private university like Notre Dame, the primary audience includes the University's students, faculty, and staff. The needs of these people take precedence over the needs of the general public, alumni, or scholars from other institutions. There are limited resources (time and money) allotted to the implementation of your information system, and it is not possible to be all things to all people. Consequently, you need to prioritize and decide to whom, primarily, you are going to cater your service. At a public university, the audience may be broader, including the general public, especially the public of the immediate area or region. In a public library, the primary audience may be area residents. In special and school libraries, the answers to these questions will seem almost obvious.

After defining who your audience is, you need to establish inter-personal relationships with them. No, you don't have to become their best buddy, but you do need to build rapport to learn their expressed needs and desires. You need to learn and, more importantly, understand the challenges and difficulties they are having when it comes to doing their work. I'm sure you can create a long list of their challenges and difficulties, but since you are not them you can not prioritize which of the challenges and difficulties are the ones they need addressed. By building relationships with your primary audience you will learn these priorities and be able to focus your resources on making them easier to accomplish.

There are many ways to build relationships and learn of your audience's priorities. Surveys are the first thing that come to mind. They are relatively inexpensive. They can touch large numbers of people, and they are good for answering "what" types of questions. "What is your age?" "What do you like and what do you dislike about our present information system?" "If you could change one thing, what would it be?" The answers to survey questions often need to be short and succinct; few people are going to give you a lot of detail while answering survey questions. The results of surveys usually manifest themselves numerically and then get converted into graphs. Along the lines of surveys are log file analysis. By looking at the statistics captured by your staff as well as your present information systems, you will get an idea of what your audience uses. People will often say one thing and act differently. Log files help put this behavior into perspective.

The other side of surveys are focus group interviews, structured communication sessions used to learn about your audience's feelings. When compared to surveys, focus group interviews require a greater degree of interpersonal skills on the part of a facilitator. They touch fewer people than surveys and therefore are often times seen as more expensive. On the other hand, focus group interviews answer questions surveys don't answer, specifically "why" questions. "Why do you like this service as opposed to another?" "Why do you think it is important to for us to implement such and such feature?" "Why do you spend your time working in this particular manner?" Just like surveys, the focus group interview process ranges from the simplistic to the complex. It can be as simple as a one-on-one chat over coffee, or it can be as elaborate as a meeting of six to twelve homogeneous people who answer questions in a moderated setting by a professional facilitator.

In conclusion, in order to learn about your audience's needs and desires, consider issuing one or more surveys first and following up with sets of focus group interviews second. This process will enable you to validate the survey's conclusions and learn why people answered the survey the way they did.

The next step in articulating an information architecture is to answer questions regarding context. What is the purpose of your information system, how does it fit within the totality of your institution's products and services, and what sorts of resources (time and money) are allotted to the system's development and maintenance?

Your information system will not exist in a vacuum. It will be a reflection of its hosting institution, and in order for the information system to reflect well you will need to know the goals and priorities of your institution. For example, you need to know the purpose of the hosting institution. What problems is it trying to solve? How can your information system be expected to contribute to the solutions? Look to your institution's mission statement for answers. Here at Notre Dame the library's role is to help the students, faculty and staff of the University community do their learning, teaching, and scholarship. The role of our website (and our MyLibrary implementation) mirrors the purpose of the University Libraries: to help facilitate learning and teaching, to assist in scholarship, to supplement access to collections and service, and to facilitate communication.

The context of your information system will also be tempered by the amount of resources allotted to its development and maintenance. These resources take the form of time, money, hardware, software, people, and expertise. The implementation and ongoing maintenance of your information system will require a diverse set of skills. None of which are necessarily more important than the other. The people with the necessary skills include subject experts, leaders of people, graphic designers, people who can mark up texts, knowledge workers who can organize content, usability experts, marketers, programmers, and systems administrators. The amount of time and energy these sorts of people can bring to the implementation of your information system is directly proportional to what your information system will enable people to do and do well. When the Web began a little more than fifteen years ago people's expectations were low, but with the growing size and diversity of the Web, people's expectations have matured, and consequently so does the need to allocate more resources to your implementation.

Defining the purpose of your information system and articulating what resources will be spent on its development is the second step in the creation of your information architecture. Do not set your goals too high lest you set yourself up for failure. Determine the importance of your information system compared to the other products and services you offer, and allocate your resources accordingly.

The third step in the creation of your information architecture is defining what content it will contain. This is akin to articulating a collection development policy.

Not even Google provides access to the totality of the world's content, and there is no reason to expect you to fill this role. Instead, focus on the answers regarding users and content to define the scope of your content. Ask yourself, "What are the strengths of my institution?" "To what degree does my collection need to be comprehensive, authoritative, up-to-date, written in a particular language, presented in an aesthetically pleasing manner, etc.?" In other words, create a list of guidelines that your information resources need to embody in order to be a part of your collection. Just because a particular information resource is about a particular subject does not necessarily mean it is a good candidate.

When the University Libraries of Notre Dame re-created its website using MyLibrary, we decided the content would not be very much different from the content of traditional, physical libraries. It contains tools to access bibliographic information, access to digital library services and collections, instructions for pedagogy, and last but not least, access to people who can help with all these processes -- librarians. The website is not designed to be a comprehensive list of resources. Instead, it is designed to highlight the most significant resources and provide starting points for learning and research. The content of the website is very much like the content of traditional library pathfinders.

Information architecture is about answering difficult questions regarding users, context, and content. It is not possible to be everything to everybody, therefore you need to define who your primary audience is. Users. Your information system is a part of a larger institution, therefore it behooves you to make sure the system fits into the institution's goals and objectives. Context. The world of information is too large for any system to embody, and therefore you need to limit the scope of your collection. Content.

Once you answer the questions regarding users, context, and content, write down the answers. Use them as guidelines for a specific period of time (at least one year), and then regularly revisit the guidelines. On your mark. Get set. Go. Not, fire and then aim.

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Eric Lease Morgan

October 12, 2005