A unified similarity coefficient for navigating through multi-dimensional information

This paper describes an integrated approach to similarity coefficients, for information spaces with multiple dimensions of different types of index term. Applications of similarity coefficients underlying different navigation tools in hypermedia are categorised by type of term. An implementation of a unified similarity coefficient based on work in numerical taxonomy is described, with illustrative scenarios from an experimental navigation via similarity tool for a prototype social history museum hypermedia system. The underlying architecture is based on a semantic approach, where semantic relationships can exist between index terms. This allows imprecise matching when comparing for similarity, with distance measures yielding a degree of match. A ranked list of matching items over several weighted dimensions is returned by the similarity navigation tool. The approach has the potential of allowing different access methods to multimedia data to be combined.