"Information anxiety afflicts modern society. In most cases--for example, when surfing on the World Wide Web--we suffer from data overload and become confused, disoriented, and inefficient."--Ramesh Jain. [Jai95]
The vast amount of information accessible on CD-ROM, and exponentially more even on the Web, demands careful structuring and provision of access mechanisms. Part I starts with an introduction into basic information retrieval techniques to lay the groundwork for understanding the tools and techniques for information filtering and exploration presented in the later parts of this book. Chapter 2 discusses general user modeling techniques and its application to information retrieval. It is not the goal of this book to give a general introduction into information retrieval and user modeling. Rather, the focus of chapters 1 and 2 is on discussing the concepts used for the ,,navigation in cyberspace" tools presented in the later chapters of part I. For a general introduction to information retrieval the reader is referred to [Sal88], [Sal89] and [Bel87]. [Chi89] gives an overview of user modeling techniques. Chapter 3 introduces the World Wide Web and its basic navigation mechanisms. Chapter 4 discusses emerging systems for web programming that have been used for our own web navigation tools presented later in the book.
Chapters 5 to 12 introduce the seven design concepts for navigation in cyberspace. We claim that by following those concepts, hypermedia authors will produce better navigable and thus easier usable hyperdocuments. At the same time, we use the seven concepts as a classification mechanism to present a wealth of tools and techniques for navigation in cyberspace. These methods can then be adapted by authors to fit their own needs.
Chapters 13-21 subsequently introduce our own tools for navigation in cyberspace: Navigation Diamond, Viewfinder, Hiermap, CYBERMAP, and Cybertree that automatically generate sequential and hierarchical navigation mechanisms and hierarchical and similarity-based overview maps for (mostly) textual documents. They can be used for quick access to information and data filtering in large information spaces. By integrating dynamic linking and automatic link generation into the automatic creation of an overview map they offer a unique way for navigation in cyberspace.