A hypertext environment for interacting with large textual databases

• Published in: Information processing & management Vol. 28; no. 3; pp. 371 - 387
• Main Authors: Agosti, M., Gradenigo, G., Marchetti, P.G.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 1992; Elsevier Science; Pergamon Press; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Browsing; Exact sciences and technology; Full Text Databases; Hypermedia; Hypertext; Implementations; Information and communication sciences; Information processing and retrieval; Information Retrieval; Information retrieval systems. Information and document management system; Information science. Documentation; Man Machine Systems; Natural Language Processing; Prototypes; Sciences and techniques of general use; Subject Index Terms; Users (Information); Europe; Textual data; Document retrieval; System architecture; Prototype; Hypertext; Databank; Semantics; Thesaurus; Browsing access; Representation; Content analysis
• ISSN: 0306-4573; 1873-5371
• DOI: 10.1016/0306-4573(92)90081-A

This paper presents a design and implementation project based on a two-level conceptual architecture for the construction of a hypertext environment for interacting with large textual databases. The conceptual architecture has been proposed to be used for a semantic representation of the informative content of a collection of documents and for the organisation of the document collection itself. The hypertext environment is based on a set of functions that permits one to exploit the potential capabilities of the two-level architecture. Those functions are presented in detail. The paper reports some results of a more general project whose final goal is the definition of a new model for information retrieval: a model with information retrieval capabilities embedded within a hypertext environment. Finally, an outline is presented of the characteristics of a prototype, named HYPERLINE, of the hypertext environment. This prototype has been developed by the Information Retrieval Service of the European Space Agency (ESA-IRS).