Maps of information spaces: Assessments from astronomy

We discuss the implementation of a cartographic user interface to bibliographic and other information subspaces in astronomy. This includes a front end to two of the five premier scholarly journals in astronomy. We present a range of comparative assessments, in operational frameworks, of this approach to accessing and retrieving astronomical information. Finally, we discuss the particular role that such cartographic user interfaces can play in Web-based information seeking, and contrast this with widely used currently available search technologies.