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Personal Table of Contents
A table of contents is the road map to the organization of any book, project, or Web site. It mirrors the author's thinking and the organizational point of view and emphasis. This is what gives you a sense of the whole. This is what shows you the structure. Trying to wade through information without a sense of its structure is like going to the Library of Congress and aimlessly combing the shelves for a particular book. Once you have a sense of how the whole is organized, you will reduce the frustration of searching for a needle in a haystack. Even if the needle is all that you need, you should know how the hay is organized.
The following page spreads reproduce a great little book created and designed by the information architect Nigel Holmes. Here it's reproduced at 80 percent of its actual size. Few of you will read it without coming to a clearer understanding of things you thought you already knew. I think Nigel's book speaks for itself as a good example of information architecture in its simplicity and its success at making a complex topic clear.
Guide to the Internet by Nigel Holmes
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