Animated maps of the library stacks were integrated into the catalog interface at Pratt Institute and into the EBSCO Discovery Service interface at Illinois State University. The mapping feature was developed for optimal automation of the update process to enable a range of library personnel to update maps and call-number ranges. The development…

The touch mouse is a new type of computer mouse that provides users with a new way of touch-based environment to interact with computers. For more than a decade, user experience (UX) has grown into a core concept of human-computer interaction (HCI), describing a user's perceptions and responses that result from the use of a product in a particular…

Academic libraries customize, support, and provide access to myriad information systems, each with complex graphical user interfaces. The number of possible information entry points on an academic library Web site is both daunting to the end-user and consistently challenging to library Web site designers. Faced with the challenges inherent in…

Two controlled experiments examined whether the animated zooming effect accompanying the opening or closing of a folder in the Apple Macintosh graphical user interface aids in the user's perception of which window corresponds to which folder. Results suggest users may become attuned to the informational content of the zooming effect with…

An online library catalog was used to evaluate an interactive query expansion facility based on relevance feedback for the Okapi, probabilistic, term weighting, retrieval system. A graphical user interface allowed searchers to select candidate terms extracted from relevant retrieved items to reformulate queries. Results suggested that the…

3D interactive virtual reality museum exhibits should be easy to use, entertaining, and informative. If the interface is intuitive, it will allow the user more time to learn the educational content of the exhibit. This research deals with interface issues concerning activating audio descriptions of images in such exhibits while the user is…

Describes an algorithm for computer generation of hierarchical indexes for document collections. The resulting index, when presented with a graphical interface, provides users with a view of a document collection that permits general browsing and informal search activities via an access method that requires no keyboard entry or prior knowledge of…

Describes PACE (Public Access Catalogue Extension), an alternative interface designed to enhance online catalogs by simulating images of books and library shelves to help users browse through the catalog. Results of a test in a college library against a text-based online public access catalog, including student attitudes, are described.…

Users of content-based software programs, including hypertexts and instructional multimedia, rely on the navigation functions provided by the designers of those program. Typical navigation schemes use abstract symbols (arrows) to label basic navigational functions like moving forward or backward through screen displays. In a previous study, the…