What does an Information Architect do?

SLIS Professor Howard Rosenbaum addressed this question in a presentation. His focus is in the context of web sites, but the ideas can be applied to any information planning needs. Below are excerpts (with the slide number). The full presentation "Fun with Information Architecture: Designing Web Sites that Work".

Slide 14: What does an Information Architect have to do?

Think strategically
What are the relevant content domains?
Given the constraints what can be done?

Plan
How are these domains related to each other?
What is the structure of these relationships?

Design
What arrangement best supports the structure and organizational requirements?

Manage
What people, tools, and resources are available?

Slide 15: An Information Architect should…

• Enjoy working with information: gathering, evaluating and organizing it
• Like research: interviewing stakeholders and analyzing results
• Be curious about tools and processes of site development
• Want to improve performance
• Be ready to fight battles to help users
• Have a good working knowledge of organizations
• Be interested in communicating complex ideas clearly