Abstract

A method of selecting a subset of a plurality of document collections for searching in response to a predetermined query is based on accessing a meta-information data file that describes the query significant search terms that are present in a particular document collection correlated to normalized document usage frequencies of such terms within the documents of each document collection. By access to the meta-information data file, a relevance score for each of the document collections is determined. The method then returns an identification of the subset of the plurality of document collections having the highest relevance scores for use in evaluating the predetermined query. The meta-information data file may be constructed to include document normalized term frequencies and other contextual information that can be evaluated in the application of a query against a particular document collection. This other contextual information may include term proximity, capitalization, and phraseology as well as document specific information such as, but not limited to collection name, document type, document title, authors, date of publication, publisher, keywords, summary description of contents, price, language, country of publication, publication name. Statistical data for the collection may include such as, but not limited to number of documents in the collection, the total size of the collection, the average document size and average number of words in the base document collection.