01693nas a2200205   4500008004100000245008600041210006900127260000900196300001200205490000700217520107400224653000801298653001701306100002201323700002101345700001801366700001801384700002001402856006501422       2016                        eng d00aMap? or List?based Recommender Agents? Does the Map Metaphor Fulfill its Promise?0 aMap or Listbased Recommender Agents Does the Map Metaphor Fulfil  c2016  a291-3080 v163 aWe present a spatialization of digital library content based on item similarity and an experiment which compares the performance of this spatialization relative to a simple list-based display. Items in the library are K-12 science and engineering learning resources. Spatialization and visualization are accomplished through 2D interactive Sammon mapping of pairwise item similarity scores based on the joint occurrence of word bigrams. The 65 science teachers participating in the experiment were asked to search the library for curricular items they would consider using in conducting one or more teaching assignments. Results indicate that whereas the spatializations adequately capture the salient features of the library’s content and teachers actively use them, item retrieval rates, task-completion time and perceived utility do not significantly differ from the semantically poorer but easier to comprehend and navigate list-based representations. These results put into question the usefulness of the rapidly increasing supply of information spatializations.10aBIS10aSupply Chain1 aReitsma, Reindert1 aHsieh, Ping-Hung1 aDiekema, Anne1 aRobson, Robby1 aZarsky, Malinda  uhttp://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1473871616669193