Broadcast Searching and z39.50 - impact on servers, networks and library systems

[Peter Schoenberg]

I would like to hear of any experience or publications on the impact of
z39.50 broadcast searching.

Possible scenarios:  
	- a state-wide catalogue offers the public the ability to search all
libraries catalogues, or sub-groups of catalogues or just the user's home
catalogue
	- a search of a library catalogue (or catalogues) also queries some
or all licensed products

Questions:
What is the impact on server load, ILS session loads?
How would licensed product vendors react if every catalogue search also
queried their server? (e.g. InfoTrac)
How are customers encouraged to search their own library first? 
	Why query 100 catalogues for the lastest by John Grisham when you
are only going to get it from your local library anyway?
How heavily used have such virtual/broadcast search based services been?
Can smaller libraries servers handle the load of much larger numbers of
searches being done at larger libraries?
Have libraries had to limit or block z39.50 searches to maintain reasonable
performance of their systems?

Obviously I have lots of questions and would be very interested in hearing
the answers.
These questions are mine alone and not those of any particular library.
__________________________________________________ 
Peter Schoenberg