This paper introduces a novel user interface that integrates search and browsing of very large category hierarchies with their associated text collections. A key component is the separate but simultaneous display of the representations of the categories and the retrieved documents. Another key component is the display ofmultiple selected categories simultaneously, complete with their hierarchical context. The prototype implementation uses animation and a three-dimensional graphical workspace to accommodate the category hierarchy and to store intermediate search results. Query specification in this 3D environment is accomplished via a novel method for painting Boolean queries over a combination of category labels and free text. Examples are shown on a collection of medical text.

this paper, we only considered the pairs formed by two nouns or one adjective followed by a noun. A detailed description of the method can be found in [Evans & Zhai 96]. To test the effect of lexical atoms for any particular configuration of the system, we add the lexical atoms to the CLARIT lexicon, and specify that they should be treated as a non-separable indexing unit. The database and the queries are then processed using the extended lexicon to prevent lexical atoms from being decomposed. The results can be compared with a baseline obtained by using the standard CLARIT lexicon