Using Maps as a User Interface to a Digital Library

Abstract

The Nemo project aims to develop a graphical interface contributing to fast navigation and exploration in the Digital Library of EDF. The digital library of EDF contains collections of documents in SGML-HyTime format, containing information on people, activities, projects, scientific work, etc. These documents are currently accessed through traditional boolean query interface and the aim of the Nemo project is to provide customizable graphical maps of documents resulting from a query. The originality of the maps lies in the fact that (1) they are computed dynamically from the characteristics of the data retrieved with a query, (2) the mapping of graphical attributes with data characteristics is highly and easily customizable and (3) map layout account for a perspective (or classification system) that is also customizable.