The Mitchell Library WordCloud: Beyond Boolean Search

Libraries are increasingly offering on-line digital access to their collections. However, traditional search-based interfaces are restrictive and do not encourage the user to explore the collection in the same way that a physical collection does. We present the Mitchell WordCloud, a novel on-line interface to the David Scott Mitchell collection of the State Library of New South Wales. Based on interface design principles for explorative search, it presents the user with a word cloud derived from the collection and a list of titles. As the user drags words from the word cloud to tell the system what they like or dislike the title list is reordered. The surrounding interface elements -- image bar, time line and Dewey bar -- provide complementary insights into the collection. The traditional vector space model for measuring text similarity was extended to take account of user dislikes and to order words in the word cloud. User studies confirmed that the Mitchell WordCloud is easy to use and encourages exploration.