Two weeks to a new federated search tool?

This is becoming a theme: blog articles about rapid deployments of federated search. Last week it was Giv rolling his own solution in two to three weeks. Now the Technolust & Loathing blog has this for an introduction to a post:

First day on the job and I have been told that the library will forgo 360 Search due to budget constraints. The web development team and I need to come up with a new system to be put in place by March 1st…no pressure! …

The author has explored a number of commercial and open source offerings, plus Google Scholar. I’m interested to know what solution could be implemented in two weeks with a tiny budget. Is a free Open Source solution really free or is there a fair amount of commitment from librarian and IT staff to make this whole thing work?

I have questions for the author:

1. What solution can you deploy in two week? What resources will it take to make this happen and do you have these resources?

2. What are you finding in your exploration of open source solutions? I’m sincerely interested to know as I don’t know what it takes to deploy them.

3. How many sources will you have? Do the connectors already exist for these sources? If not, what is your plan for building them?

Skepticism aside, I’m delighted to see blog articles about explorations into federated search. Carmichael was kind enough to respond, in her blog, to my questions which I covered in my followup. I invite the author of Technolust & Loathing to also respond in her blog, or in mine.

[ Update 3/11/09 Jacquelyn answers my questions at her blog. ]

Tags: federated search