Repositories are important infrastructures which allow the dissemination of large collections of digital resources
hosted in museums, libraries, academic institutions or specialized documentation centers. However, there
are nowadays several limitations associated with irrelevant search results based on a knowledge area. Some
studies have highlighted the major role of information visualization strategies based on Simple Knowledge
Organization Systems (SKOS) so as to mitigate such difficulties. The main goal of this article is to present
recommendations using information visualization based on SKOS for the development of navigational search
interfaces in digital repositories focused on learning process. We use card sorting as methodology in order to
obtain qualitative results in our study. As preliminary results we found that taxonomies in visual search engines
improve the access to large collections of digital resources based on SKOS, but it depends on the design of
taxonomy concepts defined in digital repositories. Finally, it is recommended that the creators of repositories
focus their efforts on define levels of relationship and partnership between digital resources using knowledge
representation structures like thesauri or ontologies; work with usable visualization interfaces like tree, radial or
icicle; and link relevant metadata fields with the navigation structure.