Visualizing a high recall search strategy output for undergraduates in an exploration stage of researching a term paper

When accessing an information retrieval system, it has long been said that undergraduates who are in an exploratory stage of researching their essay t opic should use a high recall search strategy; what prevents them from doin g so is the information overload factor associated with showing the undergr aduate a long list of citations. One method of overcoming information overl oad is summarizing and visualizing the citation list. This paper examines f ive summarization and visualization schemes for presenting information retr ieval (IR) citation output, then discusses whether these schemes are approp riate for undergraduates and other domain novice users. We ask and answer f our questions: (1) What is the message these schemes try to communicate and (2) is this message appropriate for domain novice users like undergraduate s? (3) How do these schemes communicate their message and (4) is how they c ommunicate the message appropriate for a domain novice? We conclude that (i ) the most appropriate message for information space visualizations for dom ain novice users is associative thinking, and (ii) the message should be co mmunicated with a standardized look that remains relatively constant over t ime so that the shape and form of the visualization can become familiar and thus useful to students as they navigate their way through the information space produced by a high recall search strategy. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.