A link-based collection fusion strategy

摘要

This paper presents a method for solving the collection fusion problem in hypermedia digital libraries. The proposition which is explored and evaluated is that across document links between hypermedia documents residing in distributed hypermedia collections can supply sufficient useful information to allow effective collection fusion. In contrast to other collection fusion strategies, the link-based fusion strategy does not require a learning phase before it can be utilised and, also does not use any information from remote collections other than the returned list of documents. Because of these characteristics the proposed fusion strategy is suitable for very large and extremely dynamic environments in which other collection fusion strategies (e.g. learning collection fusion strategies) may be inapplicable. Evaluation of the link-based fusion strategy demonstrates that the proposed strategy is more effective and efficient than the uniform strategy which can be applied under the same conditions.