Making digital libraries effective: Automatic generation of links for similarity search across hyper-textbooks

Textbooks are even more available in electronic format nowadays than in the past. As the size of a textbook is on an average large, the end user needs effective tools to rapidly access information encapsulated in textbooks stored in digital libraries. Statistical similarity-based links among hyper-textbooks are a means to provide those tools. In this paper, the design and the implementation of a tool that generates networks of links within and across hyper-textbooks through a completely automatic and unsupervised procedure will be illustrated. The design is based on statistical techniques. The overall methodology is presented here together with the results of a case-study reached through a working prototype which shows that connecting hyper-textbooks can be an efficient way to provide an effective retrieval capability.