Faceted browsing has become ubiquitous with modern digital libraries and online search engines, yet the process is still difficult to abstractly model in a manner that supports the development of interoperable and reusable interfaces. We propose category theory as a theoretical foundation for faceted browsing and demonstrate how the interactive process can be mathematically abstracted. Existing efforts in facet modeling are based upon set theory, formal concept analysis, and light-weight ontologies, but in many regards, they are implementations of faceted browsing rather than a specification of the basic, underlying structures and interactions. We will demonstrate that category theory allows us to specify faceted objects and study the relationships and interactions within a faceted browsing system. Resulting implementations can then be constructed through a category-theoretic lens using these models, allowing abstract comparison and communication that naturally support interoperability and reuse.

中文翻译：

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使用类别理论的可重用和可互操作的构面模型的基础。

在现代数字图书馆和在线搜索引擎中，多面浏览已变得无处不在，但是仍然难以以支持可互操作和可重用界面开发的方式对该过程进行抽象建模。我们提出类别理论作为多面浏览的理论基础，并演示如何以数学方式抽象出交互过程。方面建模方面的现有工作基于集合论，形式概念分析和轻量级本体，但是在许多方面，它们是方面浏览的实现，而不是基本，底层结构和交互的规范。我们将证明类别理论使我们能够指定多面对象并研究多面浏览系统中的关系和交互。