Information retrieval (IR) has changed considerably in recent years with the expansion of the
World Wide Web and the advent of modern and inexpensive graphical user interfaces and …

We compare the performance of two database selection algorithms reported in the literature.
Their performance is compared using a common testbed designed specifically for database …

Two new techniques for merging search results are introduced: Feature Distance ranking
algorithms and Reference Statistics. These techniques are compared with other published …

The problem of using a broker to select a subset of available information servers in order to
achieve a good trade-off between document retrieval effectiveness and cost is addressed …

In this paper, we present a statistical method to estimate the usefulness of a search engine
for any given query. The estimates can be used by a metasearch engine to choose local …

We present a methodology for finding the n most similar documents across multiple text
databases for any given query and for any positive integer n. This methodology consists of …

Summarization of intermediary query result sets plays an important role when users browse
through digital library collections. Summarization enables users to quickly digest the results …

As the number of text retrieval systems (search engines) grows rapidly on the World Wide
Web, there is an increasing need to build search brokers (metasearch engines) on top of …

We examine a class of database selection algorithms that require only document frequency
information. The CORI algorithm is an instance of this class of algorithms. In previous work …

Given a user query and a set of data sources at different locations, query routing refers to the
general problem of evaluating the query against most relevant data sources and integrating …