This paper presents the background and then reports progress made in the development of two view-based searching systems--HIBROWSE for EMBASE, searching Europe's most important biomedical bibliographic database, and HIBROWSE for EPOQUE, improving access to the European Parliament's Online Query System. The HIBROWSE approach to searching promises to provide significantly more effective information retrieval for end-users than is possible through simple keyword, command line, forms-based or hypertext linking interaction. View-based searching makes extensive use of knowledge structures in the form of thesauri and classification schemes to provide linked browsable subject views onto databases. The result is a rich interface where queries can be satisfied by selective progressive refinement and expansion of mutually dependent views. The effect for the user is to significantly increase searching power without a commensurate increase in user effort, thereby reducing the reliance on intermediaries for sophisticated searching. (Contains 17 references.) (Author)