Eric Lease Morgan writes:
 > 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.

Ah yes.  You won't be surprised to hear that we are doing the same
thing with Zebra.  For this, we use the less than exciting term "local
indexes".

 _/|_	 ___________________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor    <[log in to unmask]>    http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "I have an ugly tendency to blame all my failings on others.
	 It's something I picked up from my parents" -- Matt Wedel.