Lou Rosenfeld is an independent information
architecture consultant. He has been instrumental in helping
establish the field of information architecture, and in
articulating the role and value of librarianship within
the field.
As a graduate student in library and information studies
in the late 1980s, Lou became convinced that the skills
of librarians were grossly undervalued — in the coming
information explosion, who else would supply the skills
of organizing, classifying and labeling information?
As the Web sped that explosion along, Lou realized that
additional skills and perspectives were required to develop
coherent, intuitive structures — information architectures
— that made web content accessible to users. At Argus
Associates, a consulting company that Lou co-founded in
1991, those additional perspectives — usability engineering,
ethnography, technology analysis and others — were
successfully folded into the mix, and the company became
perhaps the best-known firm in the field of information
architecture.
Lou served as Argus' president from 1994-2001. Named a
"Technology Pioneer" by Crain's Detroit Business,
Lou served as lead information architect on projects for
such clients as AT&T, Borders Books & Music, Chrysler
Corporation, Dow Chemical, and SIGGRAPH.
With Peter Morville, Lou co-authored the best-selling book,
Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (O'Reilly,
1998; second edition, 2002), Amazon.com's "Best Internet
Book of 1998," which has been acclaimed as a classic
and is used as a standard text in many graduate-level classes.
Lou has contributed regular columns for CIO, Internet World
and Web Review magazines, and has written and edited numerous
other books, chapters, and scholarly articles.
Lou has participated heavily in efforts to coalesce the
information architecture community. He is a director and
co-founder of AIfIA, the Asilomar Institute for Information
Architecture, the sole professional organization of information
architects. Lou played a leading role in organizing and
programming the first three information architecture conferences
(the 2000 and 2001 ASIS&T Summits and ACIA 2000). He
also presents and moderates at such venues as CHI, COMDEX,
Intranets, and the web design conferences produced by Miller
Freeman, C|net and Thunder Lizard. He has taught popular
tutorials for the Nielsen Norman Group, and is currently
on a speaking tour with usability expert Steve Krug.
In 1993, Lou founded a popular Internet research service,
the Argus Clearinghouse, a successful demonstration of the
application of librarianship to making Web content more
accessible. And while at the University of Michigan, Lou
designed and co-taught some of the first academic information
and library science courses that dealt specifically with
the Internet.
Lou holds a Masters in Information and Library Studies
and a B.A. in History, both from The University of Michigan.
He serves on a variety of corporate and non-profit boards.
Lou lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
(Note - biography taken from http://louisrosenfeld.com/biography/
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