PaMS: A component-based service for finding the missing full text of articles cataloged in a digital library

Providing access to the full text of cataloged articles is a highly desirable feature for a digital library. However, in many such systems, not all metadata records have (a direct pointer to) a corresponding full-text document. In this article, we present a new service for finding the missing full text of articles cataloged in a digital library. This service is implemented as a software component in order to be readily deployable to existing systems. It works as a parameterized meta-search engine and allows digital library administrators to easily set up a search strategy, i.e., a list of existing search engines to be queried for the missing full text, as well as the filtering and ranking policies to be applied to the results retrieved by each engine. We also discuss the results of an experimental evaluation of our service with respect to its effectiveness and efficiency with collections from two distinct fields: computer science and biomedical and life sciences.