Beyond Keywords and Hierarchies

As our ability to store information increases, the mechanisms we employ to access that information become ever more important. In this paper, we present Archosum, a prototype of an organizational system that attempts to encapsulate the benefits of both hierarchical and keyword systems. By introducing abstract entities, Archosum provides a simple interface with which users can build and maintain powerful relationship-based organizations. We compared Archosum to two alternative systems in a user study. Through this study we begin to expose some of the advantages and disadvantages to each of these three approaches to designing an organizational system. Furthermore, we begin to consider how organizational systems will work when distinct users create organizations for collections and how sharing might be facilitated using Archosum.

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