What about just a Google site search?

-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nathan Tallman
Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2013 12:54 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [CODE4LIB] Providing Search Across PDFs

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