Information Architecture or Scholarship

According to Gerry McGovern at New Thinking “J R R Tolkien was an information architect.”
McGovern writes:

Information architecture is concerned with the organization and layout of content. It is a discipline that has evolved over centuries, finding its roots in writing and printing. J R R Tolkien was a master information architect. He created complex genealogical and geographical architectures. If you want to master information architecture you need to acquire the type of skills Tolkien exhibits.

We used to call that scholarship. A scholar is, after all, what Tolkien “was,” in adddition to being an inventive writer and artist. He certainly identified himself in his roles as a philologist and medievalist as a scholar, as did his employer, Oxford University.

It is the task, and the joy, of scholars to accumulate information, organize it, and provide a naviagation system, whether of pages and indices or links to assist readers in making use of the information. It’s what they do.