Federated Search of Text-Based Digital Libraries in Hierarchical Peer-to-Peer Networks

Peer-to-peer architectures are a potentially powerful model for developing large-scale networks of text-based digital libraries, but peer-to-peer networks have so far provided very limited support for text-based federated search of digital libraries using relevancebased ranking. This paper addresses the problems of resource representation, resource ranking and selection, and result merging for federated search of text-based digital libraries in hierarchical peer-to-peer networks. Existing approaches to text-based federated search are adapted and two new methods are developed for resource representation and resource selection according to the unique characteristics of hierarchical peer-to-peer networks. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approaches are both more accurate and more efficient than more common alternatives for text-based federated search in peer-to-peer networks.