A Brief Bibliography on Information Architecture

Books and One Article:
Brinck, Tom, Darren Gergle, and Scott D. Wood. Usability for the Web: Designing Web Sites that Work. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufman, 2002. This 447 page book is like a text book in that it covers a lot of ground. But if you’re serious about learning about usability, this book will be very helpful.

Chak, Andrew. “Effective Info Architecture.” Web Techniques Oct. 2001:  15-17. For those who don’t want to read a whole book on information architecture but would like to get refreshed on the basic concepts, this is a great article.

Fleming, Jennifer. Web Navigation: Designing the User Experience. Cambridge: O’Reilly, 1998. This focuses only on the navigation elements of information architecture. Navigation is a major component, and difficult to do well. This book delves into navigational issues in a much more in-depth way than the other books.

Krug, Steve. Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. Indianapolis: New Riders Publishing, 2000. If you want something short and clear on web usability issues, this is the book for you. Not only is Krug efficient at getting key concepts across, he’s funny as well. A great read.

Nielsen, Jakob. Designing Web Usability. Indianapolis: New Riders, 2000. Although there are those who don’t agree with everything Nielsen has to say, this book is often cited as seminal in the field of usability. It is well worth taking a look at.

Rosenfeld, Louis and Peter Morville. Information Architecture for the World Wide Web. Cambridge: O’Reilly, 1998. This book is widely considered the bible of information architecture. It’s less than 200 pages long and concisely delineates the basic aspects of information architecture. It is written for people who want to put the theory into action.

Websites:
Argus. Argus Center for Information Architecture. 29 Jan. 2002. <http://www.argus-acia.com/>. This site was created and is managed by the same people that wrote Information Architecture. It’s a great portal to many things related to information architecture.

Garrett, Jesse James. Information Architecture Resources. 17 Sept. 2001. <http://www.jjg.net/ia/>. This is also a portal to a wide variety of information architecture resources. Jesse James Garrett is a widely respected information architect.

Instone, Keith. Usable Web. 14 Dec. 2001. <http://www.usableweb.com/>. This is a handy portal to web usability sites.

Lynch, Patrick J., and Sarah Horton. Web Style Guide. 26 Oct. 2001 <http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/contents.html>. This guide is called a “style” manual, but it includes information architecture guidelines as well. It is also available as a book.

Nielsen, Jakob. Useit.com: Usable Information Technology. 29 Jan. 2002. <http://www.useit.com/>. Jakob Nielsen is the author of Designing Web Usability and this is his Website. There are many links here to various thing he’s written or said about usability.

W3C. Web Accessibility Initiative. 25 Feb. 2002. <http://www.w3.org/WAI/>. This is the World Wide Web Consortium’s site on Web accessibility. This is where you can find standards that will help make your Website accessible to a wider audience.