6 Conclusions

Information browsing and retrieval, just as many other technology-based human activities, can be helped greatly by a good user interface and effective classification. The user interface developed in this work is an efficient and effective mechanism for browsing through bibliographic data, allowing access to the bibliographic and documentary databases of ADS and CDS.

A number of extensions of the present work are possible. An extensive assessment of other keyword systems is currently being undertaken. With continuing new additions to the bibliographic data, updates to the system will be similarly performed in a regular fashion. Other data collections, notably catalogue information, have already been processed in the same way, and a cartographic user interface tool has been set up to allow access. These navigation tools are being made accessible through the A&A and VizieR access areas at the CDS. We expect that the reader, in using the Kohonen interface to the A&A data, will send us remarks and wishes, which we will take into consideration in future enhancements of our interface.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for support for this work by D. Egret, Director, Strasbourg Observatory, and F. Genova, Director, CDS, Strasbourg Observatory. We also acknowledge with thanks early and enthusiastic comments by J. Lequeux on this work.