[WEB4LIB] Re: search engines- free or cheap

[Thomas Dowling]

I'll also cast a vote for SWISH-E.  Not only is it a good site indexer,
but it can be used as an all-purpose full text (including XML) search
engine.  So when your boss accepts a 10-year archive of the local
newspaper and *then* asks you how to make it searchable, you're already
armed with a tool that's very capable of doing the job.


Thomas Dowling
tdowling at ohiolink.edu



A. Bullen wrote:
> Karen,
> 
> Swish-E is a wonderful tool. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It 
> takes some patience to get tweaked exactly the way you want it to be 
> tweaked, but once it's in place, it is perfect. The software, etc. can 
> be found at http://www.swish-e.org/. Combine this search engine with the 
> spidering capabilites of wget 
> (http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/wget.html) and you can do pretty much 
> anything you want.
> 
> I've also had good luck with ht://dig (http://www.htdig.org/); it is, 
> however, tricky to install correctly. It is also not as flexible or as 
> powerful as Swish-E.
> 
> Andrew Bullen
> Illinois State Library
>