Abstract: The present invention comprises a system and method for presenting large numbers of items on a display screen. According to one aspect of the present invention, information is harvested from a plurality of sites and over a plurality of times and aggregated into a single item set. According to another aspect of the present invention, this information is supplemented by data derived from sorting and classification tasks performed by humans. According to another aspect of present invention, this information is used to derive similarities between items and to derive a hierarchical classification of items into a hierarchical set of categories. According to another aspect of the present invention, one or more series of catalog displays are created which display these items arranged by different criteria and at different scales.