Dewey Decimal Classification Based Concept Visualization for Information Retrieval

Visual knowledge maps utilizing concepts have great potential to support interactive information retrieval. Unlike keyword-based visual information retrieval, concept-based knowledge maps can make the visualization easier to comprehend and manipulate. In this paper, we introduce our novel visual search interface based on Dewey Decimal Classification concept annotations. The web browser based interface visualizes search results initialized from user queries. Main functions of the interface include interactive manipulation, exploration, and filtering of concepts and links in different levels from overview to details. The visualization connects related concepts not apparent in conventional treelike hierarchical representations and it can promote discovery of novel concepts during the visual exploration of search space. A real use-case scenario is presented to highlight the advantages of the approach.