Visual Interfaces to Digital Libraries

Book excerpt: Visual Interfaces to Digital Libraries exploit the power of human vision and spatial cognition to help individuals mentally organize and electronically access and manage large and complex information spaces. They draw on progress in the field of information visualization and seek to shift the users' mental load from slow reading to faster perceptual processes such as visual pattern recognition. Based on two workshops, the book presents an introductory overview as well as a closing listing of the top ten problems in the area by the volume editors. Also included are 16 thoroughly reviewed and revised full papers organized in topical sections on visual interfaces to documents, document parts, document variants, and document usage data; visual interfaces to image and video documents; visualization of knowledge domains; cartographic interfaces to digital libraries; and a general framework.