15.1 Introduction

• Information overload and anxiety common
• Developing more powerful search and visualization methods, integration of technology with task
• Terms:
• Information gathering
• Seeking
• Filtering
• Visualization
• Traditional interfaces have been difficult for novice users
• Complex commands
• Boolean operators
• Unwieldy concepts
• Traditional interfaces have been inadequate for expert users
• Difficulty in repeating searches across multiple databases
• Weak methods for discovering where to narrow broad searches
• Poor integration with other tools
• OAI (Objects / Actions Interface)
• Customizable search options and displays using control panels
• Structured relational database
• contains relations and a schema to describe the relations
• relations have records
• records have fields, and fields have values
• Textual document libraries
• set of items (10 to 100,000)
• Multimedia document libraries
• Contains images, sound, video, animations, etc
• Task Actions (fact-finding)
• Browsing and Searching
• Scrolling
• Zooming
• Joining
• Linking
• Specific fact finding
• Extended fact finding
• Open-ended browsing
• Exploration of availability
• Where to Search
• Table of contents, Indexes, Key-Word-In-Context (KWIC)