This chapter introduces Semantic Association Networks (SANs), a novel means of using semantic web technology to tag and interlink scientific datasets, services (e.g., algorithms, techniques, or approaches), publications (e.g., papers, patents, grants), and expertise (i.e., author and user information) to improve scholarly knowledge and expertise management. Among other ends, the proposed SANs

Abstract. The Digital Library (DL) field is one of the most promising areas of application for information visualization technology. In this paper, we propose a visual user interface tool kit for digital libraries, to deliver an overview of document sets, with support for interactive direct manipulation. Our system, Citiviz, employs a dynamic hyperbolic tree to display hierarchical relationships among documents, based on where their topics fit into the ACM classification system. Also, Citiviz provides an interactive, animated 2-dimensional scatter plot. With it, users may gain insight by changing various parameters, or may directly jump to a particular document based on its label or location. According to a preliminary evaluation, our system shows advantages in performance and user preference relative to traditional text based DL web interfaces.

A key to the Web's success is the power of search. The elegant way in which search results are returned is usually remarkably effective. However, for exploratory search in which users need to learn, discover, and understand novel or complex topics, there is substantial room for improvement. Human computer interaction researchers and web browser designers have developed novel strategies to improve Web search by enabling users to conveniently visualize, manipulate, and organize their Web search results. This monograph offers fresh ways to think about search-related cognitive processes and describes innovative design approaches to browsers and related tools. For instance, while key word search presents users with results for specific information (e.g., what is the capitol of Peru), other methods may let users see and explore the contexts of their requests for information (related or previous work, conflicting information), or the properties that associate groups of information assets (group legal decisions by lead attorney).

The use of text summaries in information-seeking research has focused on query-based summaries. Extracting content that resembles the query alone, however, ignores the greater context of the document. Such context may be central to the purpose and meaning of the document. We developed a generic, a query-based, and a hybrid summarizer, each with differing amounts of document context. The generic summarizer used a blend of discourse information and information obtained through traditional surface-level analysis. The query-based summarizer used only query-term information, and the hybrid summarizer used some discourse information along with query-term information. The validity of the generic summarizer was shown through an intrinsic evaluation using a wellestablished corpus of human-generated summaries. All three summarizers were then compared in an information-seeking experiment involving 297 subjects. Results from the information-seeking experiment showed that the generic summaries outperformed all others in the browse tasks, while the query-based and hybrid summaries outperformed the generic summary in the search tasks. Thus, the document context of generic summaries helped users browse, while such context was not helpful in search tasks. Such results are interesting given that generic summaries have not been studied in search tasks and the that majority of Internet search engines rely solely on query-based summaries.

We introduce a new visual search interface for search engines. The interface is a user-friendly and informative graphical front-end for organizing and presenting search results in the form of topic groups. Such a semantics-oriented search result presentation is in contrast with conventional search interfaces which present search results according to the physical structures of the information. Given a user query, our interface first retrieves relevant online materials via a thirdparty search engine. And then we analyze the semantics of search results to detect latent topics in the result set. Once the topics are detected, we map the search result pages into topic clusters. According to the topic clustering result, we divide the available screen space for our visual interface into multiple topic displaying regions, one for each topic. For each topic’s displaying region, we summarize the information contained in the search results under the corresponding topic so that only key messages will be displayed. With this new visual search interface, users are conveyed the key information in the search results expediently. With the key information, users can navigate to the final, desired results with less effort and time than conventional searching. Supplementary materials for this paper are available at

Collection understanding shifts the traditional focus of retrieval in large collections from locating specific artifacts to gaining a comprehensive view of the collection. Visualization tools are critical to the process of efficient collection understanding. By presenting simple visual interfaces and intuitive ways of interacting with a collection, users come to understand the essence of the collection by focusing on the artifacts. This paper discusses the use of streaming collage to enhance image collection understanding.

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large-scale information landscapes are especially difficult to navigate. The large scale requires the user to integrate the information provided by successive viewpoints into a coherent mental representation, often called a "cognitive map" (Chase, 1986), which is then used for navigation. Landmarks and their layouts have been identified as critical for navigation (Golledge, 1995; Lynch, 1960; Vinson, 1999); see also Thorndyke and Hayes-Roth's (1982) work on differences in spatial knowledge acquired from maps and navigation. Darken and Sibert (1996) explored cognitive and design principles as they apply to large virtual spaces. Furnas (1997) explored view traversability and navigability for effective navigation through large data structures.

This paper presents a novel approach to the visual exploration and navigation of complex association networks of biological data sets, e.g., published papers, gene or protein information. The generic approach was implemented in the SRS Browser as an alternative visual interface to the highly used Sequence Retrieval System (SRS) [1]. SRS supports keyword-based search of about 400 biomedical databases. While the SRS presents search results as rank-ordered lists of matching entities, the SRS Browser displays entities and their relations for interactive exploration. A formal usability study was conducted to examine the SRS Browser interface’s capabilities to support knowledge discovery and management.

This paper discusses the history of domain maps in the context of similar developments in the field of cartography. Drawing from its underlying definitions, this paper identifies the purposes of domain maps and discusses how they might specifically be applied in the field of education and as front-ends to digital libraries. Keywords--- domain mapping, history, theory, cartography, digital libraries, education, future 1.