What you seem to be saying is a modified skin.
Departments > Subjects
Catalogue just seem to a list of items by various values

Can you show what you want the user interface to look like?

For my part I'm thinking of something like a library. Though you can always come up with something else.

And having thought about it for awhile here are my ideas on the look.

The front page would have an icon representing a library. The background illustration would be of a library,at first of an iconic one, though the library owner could use one of his own. Or, the illustration itself would be a link to the foyer.

The foyer would then have graphic representations of the various departments. Such as the portrait of a noted scientist for instance representing science.

The departments would then have graphic representations of the subjects found there in, such as an icon representing the history of modern France in the history department should there be any works on modern French history there.

In each subject page would be either an icon representing the manual in question. Or a library stack acting as a link to the icons should the library in question have a lot of volumes.

Where the manuals themselves are concerned you would have such as collections, series, multi-volume works, and individual volumes.

This is just my thinking, yours can always be quite different.

What you are describing is a skin to show the information and this does not relate to a different type of collection as in Manual. Photos, Forum etc.

So the question remains as to what function does the manual skin not have, not what graphs would best show of the way you would like to present data.

I believe that to map your vision on b2evos data structure, you need to take a manual collection and break it down into several sub-manuals sorted in a tree of categories/sub-categories. You can have an intro for each category that shows all the graphics you describe. Even list of sub-categories in a category will display all thumbnails as you describe.

You may also use several manual collections and arrange them in a 2 level menu by using the sections feature of b2evolution v7 + a site skin that supports a 2 level menu (some examples are bundled with b2evo v7)

b2evo v7 is in alpha stage at this time.

@fplanque wrote earlier:

I believe that to map your vision on b2evos data structure, you need to take a manual collection and break it down into several sub-manuals sorted in a tree of categories/sub-categories. You can have an intro for each category that shows all the graphics you describe. Even list of sub-categories in a category will display all thumbnails as you describe.

You may also use several manual collections and arrange them in a 2 level menu by using the sections feature of b2evolution v7 + a site skin that supports a 2 level menu (some examples are bundled with b2evo v7)

b2evo v7 is in alpha stage at this time.

That is a good description of what I'm looking for. Of course such a collection could well be a multi-layer affair, not just two. Perhaps a two layer collection at first, but with the option to expand later.

M. Plangue, you give me hope.