Abstract:
We propose a method to highlight query hits in hierarchically clustered
collections of interrelated items such as digital libraries or knowledge
bases. The method is based on the idea that organizing search results
similarly to their arrangement on a fixed reference map facilitates
orientation and assessment by preserving a user's mental map. Here, the
reference map is built from an MDS layout of the items in a Voronoi treemap
representing their hierarchical clustering, and we use techniques from
dynamic graph layout to align query results with the map. The approach is
illustrated on an archive of newspaper articles.