Applying aggregation operators for information access systems: An application in digital libraries

Nowadays, the information access on the Web is a main problem in the computer science community. Any major advance in the field of information access on the Web requires the collaboration of different methodologies and research areas. In this paper, the concept of aggregation operator playing a role for information access on the Web is analyzed. We present some Web methodologies, as search engines, recommender systems, and Web quality evaluation models and analyze the way aggregation operators help toward the success of their activities. We also show an application of the aggregation operators in digital libraries. In particular, we introduce a Web information system to analyze the quality of digital libraries that implements an important panel of aggregation operators to obtain the quality assessments. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.