Toward information retrieval Web services for digital libraries

Information retrieval (IR) functions serve a critical role in many information systems. There are many techniques and operations have been developed in IR that do not require radical changes or re-implementation. The implemented IR algorithms can be distributed or their functions made available through the framework of web services. A key idea behind web services is that frequently used functions can be implemented once and offered to other application or software environments through programmatic interfaces. Web services in the IR domain have not been widely tested. Library of User-Oriented Concepts for Access Services (LUCAS) offers IR functions such as term extraction, term clustering, and document classification as web services. It has successfully served other information systems such as the Biological Knowledge through Ontologies (BioKnOT) and the Extensible Networked Association-based Bioinformatics Learning Environment (ENABLE) Knowledge Base. In this paper, we demonstrate the utility of LUCAS to the ENALBE system.