1 ) A method of forming an overview for hierarchically related information, where the information can be represented as a set of nodes wherein each node is associated with a portion of the information comprising: a) forming a set of lexically central nodes and a remainder set, b) forming a set of auxiliary nodes from the remainder set, c) combining the set of lexically central nodes and the set of auxiliary nodes to form an extraction node set, d) selecting an overview string from the information associated with each node in the extraction node set, and e) combining the overview strings to form an overview for the information.