Guideline

Information architecture is about organizing information, whether this is visible in the design of Web pages (and their navigation) or not. It also implies the use of metadata to guarantee that the information can be found.

Metadata is commonly defined as data about data. Broadly, this means information about a document and its content. The primary purpose of metadata is to improve resource discovery through keywords, descriptions, author, etc.

Before preparing the information architecture, you should:

1. define the site subject scope. If you are designing a new Web site, the subject scope is part of the planning stage (see 3. Planning). If you have not done it yet, do it as a preliminary step before designing the navigation: it may be useful for the labelling of content categories. If you are redesigning an existing site, defining the subject scope is a useful way to analyse the content you have, identify what you want to keep in the redesigned site (some sort of content audit) and a plan for site organization. See 3.3 Define the site subject scope;
2. review Metadata (see 4.4 Metadata); and
3. contact OCP for any specific requirement for metadata schemas.

If you have an information architecture in place, or in draft form, thinking about the site subject scope is a useful way to:

• validate the content classification;
• help you review the labelling; and
• most important of all - lead you smoothly into identifying the descriptive metadata of the main pages you want to tag and index in EIMS.

The metadata section (see 4.4 Metadata) is an extensive introduction to the use and application of metadata on the Web. It also sets out how you can ensure that your content can be found on the FAO Web site and on external search engines.

Any special requirements for classifying, indexing and searching content on your site should be discussed and planned in detail at this stage.