Querying, Navigating and Visualizing an Online Library Catalog 1 User Interface Issues for Ranked Information Retrieval Systems User Interface Issues and Interaction Techniques for Information Retrieval Have in Gen- Eral Received Much Less Attention than System Issues like Document Representation

We describe the design of an User Interface for a ranked output Information Retrieval system that integrates querying, navigation and visualization in a seamless fashion. Highlights of the system include the following: Using a visualization scheme, the interface provides visual feedback to the user about how the query words innuence the ranking of retrieved documents. By simple drag-and-drop operations of objects on the screen, the interface facilitates a naive end-user in constructing complex structured queries and in providing relevance feedback. To suit the evolving information needs of the user, the interface supports navi-gational features such as browsing documents by speciic authors and browsing the Table of Contents of publications. The interface integrates an online thesaurus which provides words related to the query that can be used by the user to expand the original query. By providing a rich set of features, the interface coherently supports a wide spectrum of information gathering tactics for diierent classes of users.