A proposed information environment for enhanced integrated access and valueadding to electronic documents

Providing enhanced access and added value to electronic documents (e‐documents) will require interfaces that effectively mediate between the information seeking needs of the users and the information that the e‐document has to offer. A proposed information environment (PIE) to support effective and creative use of e‐documents to fulfil users’ various information tasks and needs is presented. Providing a suite of novel features and interactive tools that can be flexibly combined, the PIE allows users to apply multiple novel ways to intuitively query and navigate information in an e‐document. The querying and browsing processes in the PIE are supported by various interactive and visualisation techniques. Users work within a visually sovereign, integrated environment for information gathering and organising, based on navigable, fractional information objects that are also affiliated with rich metadata and additional layers of value‐adding information. This paper describes the conceptual design of the PIE and uses a representative scenario to show how the PIE is likely to be used for interacting with electronic journals (e‐journals) and the ability of the proposed environment to provide enhanced user interaction and value‐adding.