[Sigia-l] Navigating through three dimensions

[huerro at consumer.org]

Javier,

There are many examples of commercial databases that can be searched by
access points like the ones you suggest. Your public library may subscribe
to them. One example in some public libraries is called "Ebsco Host."
University libraries have them as well. You might find databases from
ProQuest in a university library. They typically feature a "basic" and
"guided"(or "advanced") search interface. The "guided" interface usually
includes fields for "subject," "author," "date," and "source publication."

Depending on the variety of topics covered in the articles you are dealing
with, your biggest challenge may be in developing a browsing taxonomy. One
difficulty  will be dealing with "subnode" topics that fit into multiple
higher level categories. Another problem will be "taxonomy breakers," or
articles on peripheral topics that don't merit a separate category or
subcategory and have to be shoe horned in somewhere. You may find that
developing such a taxonomy is unwieldy. A better solution may be to create a
thesaurus of descriptors (subject terms), and make the thesaurus accessible
to searchers. This is how some database producers, including ProQuest,
handle this problem.

Bob Huerster, Senior Research Librarian, Thesaurus Editor, Indexer

-----Original Message-----
From: javier velasco [mailto:lists at mantruc.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 10, 2002 10:07 AM
To: Sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: [Sigia-l] Navigating through three dimensions


Navigation spaces is one of the IA subjects that most 'fires me up', I
always dreamed of designing an interesting navigation space. Now I have
my chance, and the scope of the project is rather shocking, I think I'm
heading in the right direction, but I'd like to ask for some advice from
this amazing group.

This is the case:

I have a huge archive of articles, mainly news articles. And my plan is
to organize a browsable archive to engourage navigation, wandering. My
approach is to organize the archive into tree axis:

- Subject - remember "my first taxonomy"? it covers sports, culture,
society, education, etc. very huge.
- Publication (Media) - 4 newspapers, 7 magazines, some other media and
their corresponding sections.
- Date - publication date.

I believe these three axis sytem qualifies as a faceted system. Am I
right?

So where I need your help is in taking it to the interface level, please
send me examples of interfaces that manage this kind of stuff, or ideas
on how I could keep on moving.

Of course all kind of comments, or advice regarding the pre-interface
plan are also welcome.
If there's interest I can surely share the replies.

Thanks in advance,
and also thanks for all the stuff you always feed to the list, it's an
invaluable resource.

Javier

------------
When replying, please *trim your post* as much as possible.

*Plain text, please; NO Attachments

ASIST SIG IA website: http://www.asis.org/SIG/SIGIA/index.html
_______________________________________________
Sigia-l mailing list -- post to: Sigia-l at asis.org
Changes to subscription: http://mail.asis.org/mailman/listinfo/sigia-l