Explore the stacks: A system for exploration in large digital libraries

Abstract

Providing access to large digital library collections to novice users requires novel interfaces that are not built around the concept of search, as novice users frequently struggle to formulate appropriate queries. This paper presents the “Explore the Stacks” system, which provides a novel, browsing-focused interface for exploring digital library collections that is applicable to Big Data scale digital libraries. The system is demonstrated using a collection of approximately one million book illustrations provided by the British Library.