Emily Marsh

Adjunct Faculty/Research Associate
University of Maryland

“SHOW AND TELL:
RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN IMAGES AND TEXT"

Thursday, March 18, 2004
11:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon
Room 405, IS Building

Abstract: Documents—electronic and printed—are complex tools created to communicate messages to readers. Among the elements used in document design are prose, images, color, and spatial relationships. The final message is a synthesis of these components, and the interplay among all elements is of critical concern to people who need to convey and retrieve information effectively. Given the complexity of this issue, there is advice aplenty on creating effective illustrated messages, but precious little data to implement recommendations like the ones above.

This presentation will describe an original taxonomy of 46 image-text relationships developed to address just these issues. It is applicable to all subject areas and document types. The taxonomy identifies image-text relationships and groups them in three categories according to the closeness of the conceptual relationship between image and text.

The taxonomy was developed in a two-stage process: First, an extensive review of relevant research in children’s literature, education, library and information design, journalism, and lexicography identified existing definitions and classifications of image-text relationships. Next, the taxonomy arising from the review was applied in a content analysis of 954 image-text pairs. The pairs came from 45 Web homepages from three domains: educational sites for children, online newspapers, and retail business sites. The results of this analysis will be described, along with observations on practice and research implications in information retrieval and document design.