I, and most of the people I've worked with, have been using the terms
"metasearch", "federated search", "broadcast search" and "distributed
search" synonymously for years.  Have they now settled down into
having distinct meanings?  If anyone could summarise, I'd be grateful.

 _/|_	 ___________________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor    <[log in to unmask]>    http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "Sorry if my English didn't good enough to well explain my idea"
	 -- Ronachai Pratanaphon.



Yitzchak Schaffer writes:
 > Andrew Nagy wrote:
 > > Summon is really more than an NGC as we are selling it as a service - a
 > > unified discovery service.  This means that it is a single repository of the
 > > library's content ( subscription content, catalog records, IR data, etc.).
 > > Federated search is not apart of Summon
 > 
 > Well, if we understand "federated" to mean "bringing stuff together by 
 > searching all of it at once," then it is, as opposed to "broadcast 
 > searching," a term you used later in this sentence.  As in, "Origin:
 > 1665?75; < L foeder?tus leagued together, allied, equiv. to foeder- 
 > (nom. s. foedus) league" from
 > http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=federated
 > 
 > It is, though, a great *breakthrough* in the area of federated search, 
 > which is why we ordered an onsite demo immediately on hearing about this 
 > product.
 > 
 > But I don't think I was clear with my question in any case; it occurs to 
 > me now that my true question wasn't code-related, but seeing Summon on 
 > the conf agenda prompted me to bring it up here.  Namely: has anyone 
 > investigated whether the arrangements SerSol has with content vendors 
 > are easily duplicable by institutions for home-baked/potential OSS products
 > 
 > -- 
 > Yitzchak Schaffer
 > Systems Manager
 > Touro College Libraries
 > 33 West 23rd Street
 > New York, NY 10010
 > Tel (212) 463-0400 x5230
 > Fax (212) 627-3197
 > Email [log in to unmask]
 > Twitter /torahsyslib