Patent ID: 7133870

Claim:
A method of constructing a catalog of rankings from objects stored within a network, the network including a plurality of interconnected computers with one computer storing the catalog and being designated a cataloging site and at least two other computers storing a plurality of objects and being designated source sites, the method comprising: a) receiving inputs from users of each of the two or more source sites mapping one or more of the plurality of objects to one or more user defined descriptors associated with a category of descriptors; b) storing the inputs in an index file c) running on each source site a program which assembles data relating to objects stored on the source site; d) ranking at least some of the assembled data as a function of a set of ranking rules and the index file, thereby assigning rankings to the assembled data; e) transmitting the rankings from each source site to the cataloging site; and f) aggregating the rankings at the cataloging site to generate a catalog of rankings, wherein at least one of the rankings relates to a set of objects on the source site and wherein an agent calculates a relationship value representing a distance in text between objects and, at the cataloging site, these relationship values are combined with relationship values from other sites to create a relationship value table representing the likelihood of an object being similar to another object.