Trends and challenges of visual search interfaces in digital libraries and repositories
| Published date | 06 February 2017 |
| Date | 06 February 2017 |
| Pages | 69-98 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-03-2015-0046 |
| Author | Paul Alonso Gaona-García,David Martin-Moncunill,Carlos Enrique Montenegro-Marin |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
Trends and challenges of visual
search interfaces in digital
libraries and repositories
Paul Alonso Gaona-Garcia
Universidad Distrital Francisco Jose de Caldas, Bogota, Colombia
David Martin-Moncunill
Department of Computer Science, University of Alcalá, Madrid, Spain, and
Carlos Enrique Montenegro-Marin
Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas, Bogotá, Colombia
Abstract
Purpose –This paper aims to present an overview of the challenges encountered in integrating visual
search interfaces into digital libraries and repositories. These challenges come in various forms, including
information visualisation, the use of knowledge organisation systems and metadata quality. The main
purpose of this study is the identication of criteria for the evaluation and integration of visual search
interfaces, proposing guidelines and recommendations to improve information retrieval tasks with emphasis
on the education-al context.
Design/methodology/approach –The information included in this study was collected based on a
systematic literature review approach. The main information sources were explored in several digital
libraries, including Science Direct, Scopus, ACM and IEEE, and include journal articles, conference
proceedings, books, European project reports and deliverables and PhD theses published in an electronic
format. A total of 142 studies comprised the review.
Findings –There are several issues that authors did not fully discuss in this literature review study; more
specic, aspects associated with access of digital resources in digital libraries and repositories based on
human computer interaction, i.e. usability and learnability of user interfaces; design of a suitable navigation
method of search based on simple knowledge organisation schemes; and the use of usefulness of visual search
interfaces to locate relevant resources.
Research limitations/implications –The main steps for carrying out a systematic review are drawn
from health care; this methodology is not commonly used in elds such as digital libraries and repositories.
The authors aimed to apply the fundamentals of the systematic literature review methodology considering the
context of this study. Additionally, there are several aspects of accessibility that were not considered in the
study, such as accessibility to content for disabled people as dened by ISO/IEC 40500:2012.
Originality/value –No other systematic literature reviews have been conducted in this eld. The research
presents an in-depth analysis of the criteria associated with searching and navigation methods based on the
systematic literature review approach. The analysis is relevant for researchers in the eld of digital library
and repository creation in that it may direct them to considerations in designing and implementing visual
search interfaces based on the use of information visualisation.
Keywords Metadata, Ontologies, Information visualisation, Learning objects,
Knowledge organisation systems, Visual search interfaces
Paper type Literature review
This work was partially supported by CIDC at Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas reference
number research project 11/2015.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0264-0473.htm
Visual search
interfaces
69
Received 18 March 2015
Revised 24 July 2015
21 December 2015
10 March 2016
Accepted 9 May 2016
TheElectronic Library
Vol.35 No. 1, 2017
pp.69-98
©Emerald Publishing Limited
0264-0473
DOI 10.1108/EL-03-2015-0046
Introduction
Digital repositories (Kennan and Wilson, 2006) and libraries (Isfandyari-Moghaddam and
Bayat, 2008) are important infrastructures. They are extensively used to facilitate accessing
collections of digital resources created by museums, libraries, archives and digital
documentation centres, among other institutions. These institutions deal with the storage of
educational materials, such as open discovery space (Nikolas et al., 2014), Multimedia
Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) (Burns and Schell,
2002), ARIADNE (Duval et al., 2001) and Educational Repository of the Spanish Educational
Community (AGREGA2) (Sarasa et al., 2009), to optimise the management of and
information searching processes for their resources. However, the large number and
heterogeneity of digital resources generate some limitations (Tsakonas and Papatheodorou,
2007;Tsakonas et al., 2013) that restrict the use of digital libraries and repositories of
educational materials. This has led to the development and use of alternative solutions based
on the implementation of vocabulary enrichment (Wang et al., 2008) and knowledge
organisation systems (KOSs) (Shiri and Molberg, 2005;Solomou and Papatheodorou, 2010),
which are used in classication, categorisation, linking and management of contents. The
implementation of these strategies has generated a solid technological structure linked to a
series of semantic enrichment strategies (Rajabi et al., 2015). The use of KOSs enables
management and administration activities; creators and developers of repositories usually
make use of these advantages.
Most digital libraries and repositories, particularly repositories developed for creators
and experts, now use types of KOSs to offer methods by which to manage, sort and organise
learning objects. The use of repositories and digital libraries can be improved by the
implementation of KOSs, thereby helping users to locate learning objects, display additional
information and identify relationships, categories and areas of expertise, among other tasks.
However, it appears that these classication schemes are not always used and exploited
to the extent that might be desirable, mainly because conventional users (students and
teachers) are not familiar with the complex systems of knowledge organisation schemes
experts and repository creators generally use them to classify resources. On the other hand,
the interfaces provided for conventional users do not always provide the essential
functionalities they need (Martín-Moncunill et al., 2013). Thus, the use of educational
repositories is not always straightforward, because their interfaces and search mechanisms
do not always offer adequate searching strategies (Martín-Moncunill et al., 2013). This is a
key factor that, depending on the situation, may either help users understand the context of
the educational repository or hamper the learning process, the latter of which may foster the
gradual abandonment of these tools.
There are a variety of studies that highlight issues related to the visual and textual search
interface. An important aspect of information visualisation to highlight in the visual search
interface is the possibility of increasing user retention via the use of design aspects, such as
colour, size, shape, orientation, position, organisation and relations in content. According to
Baeza-Yates and Ribeiro-Neto (2011), the main purpose of visual search interfaces is to
reduce the mental workload of the user. However, according to Hearst (2009), applying
visualisation to textual information is quite challenging, especially when the goal is to
improve the ability to search text collections. Cao et al. (2010) highlighted the importance of
using visual representation rather than textual interfaces to search document collections
using an exploratory process. From a theoretical point of view, visual interfaces that can
effectively take advantage of the possibilities created by the use of KOSs and semantics
sound promising, especially in the educational context (Gaona-Garcí et al., 2014b,2014c), but
from a practical standpoint, the solutions currently available to end-users are far away from
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