CAREER: Incorporation of Categorical Metadata into Information Access User Interfaces

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

The rapidly expanding size and complexity of digital library collections necessitates new interfaces for exploring, searching, and understanding their contents. This project will investigate how to effectively incorporate large category hierarchies into information access user interfaces and will address the following research questions: Can dynamically suggested query previews improve comprehension and findability within digital libraries and domain-specific text collections? Can categorical metadata be used effectively within such query previews? Does visualization of category metadata improve comprehension of the relationships among articles for some users? A series of designs will be prototyped and evaluated, starting with text-based displays and progressing to sophisticated visualizations. The evaluation will be of a ``regression test'' form, in which the same set of evaluation criteria are applied at each stage of the design. The educational component of this proposal will integrate the results of this and related research into a graduate curriculum on information organization, retrieval, and use. Specifically, it will answer open questions about the relationship between information organization techniques and information retrieval interfaces that can make use of such organizations.