What is Information Architecture (IA)?

As there is no agreed upon answer for the question I present a few answers, that taken together should give you a sense what IA is about.

• The Information Architecture Institute's defines IA as:
  1, the structural design of shared information environments;
  2, the art and science of organizing and labeling web sites, intranets, online communities and software to support usability and findability;
  3, an emerging community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape.
• Nathan Shedroff definition is:
  "a field and approach to designing clear, understandable communications by giving care to structure, context, and presentation of data and information."
• According to Aardwark Media it is:
  "The organisation of information, in terms of: navigation, layout and search functionality. The goal is to enable users to find the information they are seeking in a clear manner."
• ConferZone describes it as:
  The organization and categorization of online content. The rules and structure of where and how to store content.
• The current Wikipedia description starts with:
  "IA is the practice of structuring information (knowledge or data) for a purpose."

Why a Resource Guide?

As a long time webprogrammer I got interested in IA from the point of view on how to organize the larger and larger scale websites I was responsible building. As a current Information Science student my interest in the field widened to include how it could help to serve users better. I built this website primarily as a tool for myself to gather resources I found useful in my pursuit of learning more about IA. At the same time I also hope it can help other novices in the field. (You can read more about the background of the site.)