Polymorphic cataloguing and viewing system for using digital archives: MoSaIC-II

We propose a digital content viewing system which visualizes the polymorphic relationships among digital content interactively and uses it as a visual interface. The relationships are expressed by associating of two content and grouping and shown by directed graphs. On the graphs, nodes mean the content files or the groups, and edges mean correspondences or group members. The graphs are archived as relation catalogues separately from content files. We visualize the relations of content on a directed graph. To visualize the graphs, we use a method of locating nodes by horizontal directions and height. Nodes linked with a target node will be located on a horizontal circle and their height is decided by their relation catalogue. After deciding the node location, nodes and links are drawn using 3D graphics and animation. The visualization result called 'polymorphic view' is used as a visual interface for selecting content. Selecting content on the visualized graph will expand new links and new content nodes additionally. We can show another content by tracing graph links. It becomes easy to understand the relations between digital content, because we can change the direction and size of the directed graph. We developed a content viewer system (MoSaIC-II) using the polymorphic view as a visual interface and we can see the usability of the polymorphic view.