Peter is the well-known co-author of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web and author of Ambient Findability. He bills himself as a crazy librarian. In this first 10 minute segment of our interview, we discuss the challenges traditional libraries face.
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In this 10 minute podcast (download iPod compatible, 52MB), Peter Morville and I kick off an interview with an overall theme of how to organize information on the web. Peter is one of the founders of the field of Information Architecture, having co-written the seminal Information Architecture for the World Wide Web now in its third edition, as well as Ambient Findability recently showcased in the Google tech seminar series. Self-deprecatingly, he describes himself as just a "crazy librarian".
In this segment, we discuss the state of modern libraries and how the Internet has transformed them. Some highlights:
- Peter first felt the world wide web would transform libraries in 1993, a time when it was still possible to find all of the world's web pages indexed on a single root page in Switzerland.
- Library traffic is up. More people use libraries.
- However traditional measures of library health are down. In particular, book circulation has plummeted.
- Libraries are moving toward something they refer to as Library 2.0 that essentially tries to enhance the library's role as a local access point for the global knowledge network.
In our next segment, we'll discuss the role authoring books has played in helping Peter shape the field of Information Architecture.
Additional Links
- In the podcast, we mention something called Web 2.0 which might be thought in an overly simplified form as web sites that capitalize on audience-generated content.
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