This might not fit your need exactly, but a Google Custom Search (
http://www.google.com/cse/) should do the job. You can have the Custom
Search only index a given directory, or only PDFs, whichever is more useful.

Jason


On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 12:53 PM, Nathan Tallman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> My institution is looking for ways to provide search across PDFs through
> our website. Specifically, PDFs linked from finding aids. Ideally searching
> within a collection's PDFs or possibly across all PDFs linked from all
> finding aids.
>
> We do not have a CMS or a digital repository. A digital repository is on
> the horizon, but it's a ways out and we need to offer the search sooner.
> I've looked into Swish-e but haven't had much luck getting anything off the
> ground.
>
> One way we know we can do this through our discovery layer VuFind, using
> it's ability to full-text index a website based on a sitemap (which would
> includes PDFs linked from finding aids). Facets could be created for
>  collections, and we may be able to create a search box on the finding aid
> nav that searches specifically that collection.
>
> But, I'm not sure how scalable that solution is. The indexing agent cannot
> discern when a page was updated, so it has to re-scrape,
> everything, every-night. The impetus collection is going to have about over
> 1000 PDFs. And that's to start. Creating the index will start to take a
> long, long time.
>
> Does anyone have any ideas or know of any useful tools for this project?
> Doesn't have to be perfect, quick and dirty may work. (The OCR's dirty
> anyway :-)
>
> Thanks,
> Nathan
>