On Tuesday the DCIA held its first IA reading group, led by Dan Brown. Our book was Practical Information Architecure by Eric Reiss, which got mixed reviews. Nobody really disliked it, but some complained about the tone, saying it was a bit friendly and informal for them.

Personally, I’m all for friendly and informal. I thought the book covered the full breadth of the topic pretty well, although at a fairly low level. This is definitely a book for beginners, or for people who interact with information architects and want to learn more about what’s what in a web development project. Reiss’ book sparked a lot of ideas while I was reading it, so I came away from it feeling very productive. I had to read it with a little pad of paper so I could scribble down my thoughts – not necessarily something Reiss suggested, but a serendipidous connection between what I am working on and what he was writing about. Anyone who works on relatively large-scale web projects would benefit from reading it. If nothing else, it helps organize your thoughts into a coherent whole, which is useful in its own right, even if you don’t learn anything new.