Reducing subject tree browsing complexity

Julien, Charles‐Antoine; Tirilly, Pierre; Dinneen, Jesse David; Guastavino, Catherine

doi:10.1002/asi.22915

Cited by 16 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…This fact greatly difficult its representation in a way it is useful for an end-user browsing through it; not only due to screen limitations but also due to the user capability to avoid getting lost while trying to navigate through vast amounts of terms. Approaches like the one described by Julien et al (2013) aim to facilitate browsing for documents by capitalizing on the highly uneven distribution of real-world collections by reducing the subject tree complexity. Having information about the "distance degree" could support the decision on how to show or hide certain terms.…”

Section: Search Tacticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the concept specialization distance from an end-user perspective

Martín-Moncunill

Sicilia-Urban

García‐Barriocanal

et al. 2017

OIR

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For AuthorsIf you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.*Related content and download information correct at time of download. Purpose -The common understanding of generalization/specialization relations assumes the relation to be equally strong between a classifier and any of its related classifiers and also at every level of the hierarchy. Assigning a grade of relative distance to represent the level of similarity between the related pairs of classifiers could correct this situation, which has been considered as an oversimplification of the psychological account of the real-world relations. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach -The evaluation followed an end-user perspective. In order to obtain a consistent data set of specialization distances, a group of 21 persons was asked to assign values to a set of relations from a selection of terms from the AGROVOC thesaurus. Then two sets of representations of the relations between the terms were built, one according to the calculated concept of specialization weights and the other one following the original order of the thesaurus. In total, 40 persons were asked to choose between the two sets following an A/B test-like experiment. Finally, short interviews were carried out after the test to inquiry about their decisions. Findings -The results show that the use of this information could be a valuable tool for search and information retrieval purposes and for the visual representation of knowledge organization systems (KOS). Furthermore, the methodology followed in the study turned out to be useful for detecting inconsistencies in the thesaurus and could thus be used for quality control and optimization of the hierarchical relations. Originality/value -The use of this relative distance information, namely, "concept specialization distance," has been proposed mainly at a theoretical level. In the current experiment, the authors evaluate the potential use of this information from an end-user perspective, not only for text-based interfaces but also its application for the visual representation of KOS. Finally, the methodology followed for the elaboration of the concept specialization distance data set showed potential for detecting possible inconsistencies in...

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Section: Search Tacticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the concept specialization distance from an end-user perspective

Martín-Moncunill

Sicilia-Urban

García‐Barriocanal

et al. 2017

OIR

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“…The process extracts the LCSHs assigned to the bibliographic collection, which are matched to an authority record to place each bibliographic record in the LCSH hierarchy. Some researchers have developed algorithms to modify large topic structures that can overwhelm users; our LCSH hierarchy was simplified using the automated process described in Julien et al (2013). The approach opportunistically prunes a topic tree based on the expected power law distribution of topic assignments to the collection, which are common in organized information (Julien et al, 2012).…”

Section: Making a Usable Lcsh Hierarchymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The approach opportunistically prunes a topic tree based on the expected power law distribution of topic assignments to the collection, which are common in organized information (Julien et al, 2012). Capitalizing on this trend, Julien et al (2013) reduce the size and depth of a collection's subject tree by pruning the subjects that are not representative of a collection, which was applied to our LCSH hierarchy. The implemented LCSH hierarchy contains 8,760 unique topics whose multiple inheritance duplicates produce a tree containing 578,449 topics.…”

Section: Making a Usable Lcsh Hierarchymentioning

confidence: 99%

Library of congress subject heading (LCSH) browsing and natural language searching

Julien

Asadi

Dinneen

et al. 2016

Proc. Assoc. Info. Sci. Tech.

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Controlled topical vocabularies (CVs) are built into information systems to aid browsing and retrieval of items that may be unfamiliar, but it is unclear how this feature should be integrated with standard keyword searching. Few systems or scholarly prototypes have attempted this, and none have used the most widely used CV, the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), which organizes monograph collections in academic libraries throughout the world. This paper describes a working prototype of a Web application that concurrently allows topic exploration using an outline tree view of the LCSH hierarchy and natural language keyword searching of a real-world Science and Engineering bibliographic collection. Pilot testing shows the system is functional, and work to fit the complex LCSH structure into a usable hierarchy is ongoing. This study contributes to knowledge of the practical design decisions required when developing linked interactions between topical hierarchy browsing and natural language searching, which promise to facilitate information discovery and exploration.

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“…This especially concerns users who are not familiar with the knowledge domains covered by the collection. Julien, Tirilly, Dinneen, and Guastavino (2013) showed that the size of the Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) hierarchy could be significantly reduced while still providing access to the vast majority of the collection. For computational efficiency, they used an estimation of the number of accessible documents offered by each subject term.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Multiple subject assignment per document is described as a distinctive characteristic of document collections organized using a subject hierarchy as compared with digital file folder organization. The work of Julien et al (2013) is a novel line of research that aims to facilitate browsing for documents in large and complex subject hierarchies. Finally, the current study is shown to be an alternative method of indicating the subjects that can be pruned with minimal effect on collection access.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exact versus estimated pruning of subject hierarchies

Julien

Tirilly

2013

Proc of Assoc for Info

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Many large digital collections are organized by subject; these useful information organization structures are large and complex, thus difficult to browse. Current online tools and visualization prototypes show small localized subsets and do not provide the ability to explore the predominant patterns of the overall subject structure. This study builds on existing work concerning automatic subject hierarchy modification techniques that aim to facilitate browsing for documents by capitalizing on the highly uneven distribution of real-world collections. Specifically, previous work used an estimation of the number of accessible documents offered by each subject term, while the current study uses the exact number of accessible documents. The impact is demonstrated on a large collection organized using Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). Results show that, although computationally more demanding, pruning the MeSH hierarchy based on the exact access produces a different subject hierarchy under some conditions. The visual impact is demonstrated using traditional outline views. This study has implications for the development of information organization theory and human-information interaction techniques for subject hierarchies.

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Reducing subject tree browsing complexity

Cited by 16 publications

References 51 publications

Evaluating the concept specialization distance from an end-user perspective

Evaluating the concept specialization distance from an end-user perspective

Library of congress subject heading (LCSH) browsing and natural language searching

Exact versus estimated pruning of subject hierarchies

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