Formalizing Semantic Spaces For Information Access

Abstract

An exponentially growing volume of digital information makes extraction of relevant items increasingly difficult. This article documents the adoption of information visualization tools by researchers in the disciplines of geography, computer science, and information science to facilitate exploration of very large data archives. Graphic depiction of database content (or the database "semantics") can be based on a spatial or even a geographic metaphor. Such depictions, often called information spaces or information worlds, provide one example of "spatialization." Various forms of spatialized views are critiqued in this article. To date, systematic approaches to the creation of spatialized views have lacked solid theoretical foundations. Three spatial frames of reference are presented to formalize and visualize semantic spatialized views: geographic space, cognitive space, and Benediktine space. Application to an example of a very large online catalog (GEOREF) highlights the underlying assumptions of the space types and demonstrates what spatial properties are preserved for each proposed approach. Key Words: information retrieval, semantic information spaces, spatial metaphors, spatialization, visualization.The summation of human experience is being expanded at a prodigious rate, and the means we use for threading through the consequent maze to the momentarily important item is the same as was used in the days of squarerigged ships. (Bush 1945, 102) his statement, written half a century ago by the Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, has not lost relevance. On the contrary, the overwhelming volume of data makes it necessary to consider effective ways to locate, analyze, extract and digest information archived in proliferating digital repositories. This article explores the application of cognitive and spatial concepts to the exploration, navigation, and knowledge extraction of very large datasets, online archives, and digital libraries of geographic information, an issue that is critical to the development of geography in the Information Age. A broad range of research in geography can benefit from improved access to online information sources, especially areas that work with large data sets. As the volume of collected data increases, demands for improved access are also likely to increase. This research could be used to improve current digital information-seeking tools such as Yahoo, AltaVista, and other Internet search engines by including tools to provide an overview of available information, to discover relationships between items in a data archive, and to filter nonrelevant pieces of information. Timely and efficient access to relevant data facilitates knowledge acquisition, scientific endeavor, and research advance.The National Research Council's Committee on Human Factors (NRC 1995, 202) identifies three major concerns regarding information access and usability. First, inefficient extraction methods challenge access to a relevant subset of information, if many unwanted items are r...

How does GIScience support spatio-temporal information search in the humanities?

“…As illustrated in Figure 2, the next step is to depict this multivariate information in spatialized displays because we wish to support information search by perceptually salient and cognitively supportive design principles (Fabrikant and Buttenfield, 2001). We decided to use network visualizations to depict spatio-temporal information because they visually emphasize the inherent connectedness and elicited hierarchical structure of places.…”

Ontology-Based Geospatial Data Query and Integration

“…Difference in semantics used in different data sources is one of the major problems in spatial data sharing and data interoperability [6,16]. One possible approach to overcome the problem of semantic heterogeneity is by means of ontology [18,31,32].…”

Cognitively Plausible Information Visualization

“…This chapter will focus on design challenges one and two, thus omitting the third issue from the discussion, as it has been addressed elsewhere (Fabrikant and Buttenfield, 2001). Based on design challenges (1) and (2) in above list, we see the construction of cognitively adequate spatializations as a two-step transformation process (Fabrikant and Buttenfield, 2001).…”

“…Based on design challenges (1) and (2) in above list, we see the construction of cognitively adequate spatializations as a two-step transformation process (Fabrikant and Buttenfield, 2001). First, a semantic generalization is applied to the database.…”

“…Two key concerns should be addressed from a usability standpoint: the use of spatial metaphors as a data transformation strategy, and the effectiveness of spatial depictions for knowledge extraction. As argued in this chapter, an explicit and structured spatialization design strategy needs to be in place before usable information spaces can be constructed and tested for usability (Fabrikant and Buttenfield, 2001).…”