Douglas Tudhope, Carl Taylor and Paul Benyon-Davies
This paper describes a prototype implementation of a hypermedia social history exhibit. Media items (mostly digital images of old photographs) are classified by Time, Location, and Subject (the Social History and Industrial Classification is employed). Two advanced navigation tools are described, one that suggests alternatives to unsuccessful requests for information, based on a generalisation of current position. The other is a form of navigation via similarity. These tools are based on semantic distance measures of similarity between terms in structured classification systems. It is argued that these tools may assist the lay user, who has imperfect knowledge of the organisation of the collection and structure of the classification system.