DESIGN FOR A BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATABASE FOR NONPROFESSIONAL USERS

Today's massive commercial databases present several drawbacks that make questionable their appropriateness for popular use. Many of these databases do not meet the information query and retrieval needs of the non-professional public, as they have barriers of Boolean query language, database specific terminology, and retrieved references which may not be available within the system being patronized. This paper explores a design for a popular bibliographic system based on the cognitive representation of knowledge as hierarchical schemata and basic level categories of knowledge. The work offers a design for a bibliographic database which keys data-entries to their bound volumes, making possible a specialized system that matches a given collection's contents. For the query model, data-item model, and user interface, the metaphor of the outline, which is a commonly recognized and utilized communication form throughout different age groups, is used.