Designing a language for creating conceptual browsing interfaces for digital libraries

Conceptual browsing interfaces can help educators and learners to locate and use learning resources in educational digital libraries; in particular, resources that are aligned with nationally-recognized learning goals. Towards this end, we are developing a strand map library service, based on the maps published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). This service includes two public interfaces: (1) a graphical user interface for use by teachers and learners and (2) a programmatic interface that enables developers to construct conceptual browsing interfaces using dynamically generated components. We describe our iterative, rapid prototyping design methodology, and the initial round of language type components that have been implemented and evaluated.