Patent ID: 8655869

Claim:
A system for navigating a collection of information comprising a set of materials, wherein the collection of information is organized, at least in part, based on facets used to describe the set of materials, the system comprising: at least one processor operatively connected to a memory, the processor when executing is configured to: access a plurality of objects, wherein each object in the plurality of objects comprises a collection of facets including an object type, wherein each facet characterizes the object, and wherein each object further comprises at least one relationship linking the object to another object and specified by a relationship type defined as one of a unidirectional relationship and a bi-directional relationship between a first object type and a second object type; compute a first navigation state in response to a query, the first navigation state comprising a first set of objects from the collection of information; access, responsive to computing the first navigation state, at least one object in a second set of objects, wherein the second set of objects is accessed using the at least one relationship defined by at least one object in the first set of objects of the first navigation state, wherein the accessing includes accessing a set of facets and a set of facet values describing the second set of objects; determine a possible refinement to the first navigation state based on at least one facet or facet value associated with at least one object in the second set of objects; and display the possible refinement to the first navigation state.