On Apr 21, 2009, at 10:40 AM, Mike Taylor wrote:

> 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.



Yes, to me, the quoted phases above are synonymous.

But I believe we are also seeing a new type of index manifesting  
itself, and this new index has yet to be named. Specifically, I'm  
thinking of the index where various types of content is aggregated  
into a single index and then queried. For example, instead of  
providing a federated search against one or more library catalogs, a  
Z39.50 accessible journal article index, a local cache of harvested  
OAI content, etc., I think we are beginning to see all of these  
content silos (and others) brought together into a single (Solr/ 
Lucene) index and searched simultaneously. I'm not sure, but I think  
this is how Summon works.

-- 
Eric Lease Morgan
Head, Digital Access and Information Architecture Department
Hesburgh Libraries, University of Notre Dame