Metadata-Mediated Browsing and Retrieval in a Cultural Heritage Image Collection

For users of image management systems, and especially for the user who doesn't know what he wants until he sees it, these systems should be organized in such a way as to support intelligent browsing so that the user will be satisjed in the shortest amount of time. It is our belief that intelligent browsing should be mediated by the standard paradigms of image similarity as well as by an appropriate organization of metadata, including annotations and self-describing image regions.