Labeled, typed links as cues when reading hypertext documents

This article examines the classification of link types within hypertext databases. Do labeled links act as cues, enabling understanding of the structure and leading to more informed navigational choices? Although there is anecdotal evidence that indicating link types to readers is useful in hypertext systems, there is little experimental data to support this position. This study tries to provide an experimental basis for the development of labels identifying link types. It addresses whether labeling the different types of links affects hypertext searching by providing or enhancing a structure for readers of nonlinear texts. An experiment was run to determine which of the following three conditions serve users with better cues and lead to increased performance in both browsing and querying scenarios: 1) Providing only organizational links; 2) Adding unlabeled semantic, rhetorical, and pragmatic links in addition to the organizational links; and 3) Adding labeled semantic, rhetorical, and pragmatic links to the organizational links. The experiment used a between subjects design where subjects were library science students. SuperBook was used as the hypertext platform and the OCLC Cataloguing Users' Guide was used as the hypertext document. The statistical results indicate that there was no significant difference between the three conditions in the browsing task. However, subjects who had labeled content‐based links performed significantly better on the querying task. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.