Electronic media exists in far more forms than books and libraries. There are electronic versions of sound recordings and video data and there are thousands of computer databases and networks of computer resources. Overviews and Landmarks are two techniques which can help with the navigation problem. Overviews are like a book's table of contents. Subject areas are condensed into short descriptions and hyperlinks can be used to get to the more detailed information.
Overviews can be hierarchical and span vast quantities of data.
More sophisticated overviews can use graphics techniques to highlight and represent data in a symbolic manner. Landmarks provide familiar reference points to help guide a user. A typical example is to provide a hyperlink to a book's table of contents, index or other significant contents at the bottom of each page. This enables the user to quickly jump to a known location at any time. In a virtual world landmarks provide the same function as landmarks in the real world ie.