An apparatus and method facilitate combined query based searching with serendipitous browsing in a multimedia collection. A user selects objects to label from a local map, which may include representations of objects retrieved from the collection as being responsive to a text or image base query. The text and image portions of the object can be independently labeled. Unlabeled objects are scored and ranked based on the applied labels of labeled objects, which may take into account cross-media pseudo-relevance and user selectable (or default) parameters, such as a forgetting factor, which tends to place greater weight on more recently labeled objects, and a modality parameter, which laces greater weight on the modality (text, image, or hybrid) currently selected by the user. The local map is modified, based on the ranking, optionally after reranking of objects to improve the diversity of the displayed objects.